2018 Winning Professor of Dentistry
Dr. Bruce Freeman
Co-Director, Facial Pain Unit, Mount Sinai Hospital Associate in Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Toronto (ON)
Nominated for Excellence
Dr. Freeman is an Associate in Dentistry at the University of Toronto and co-directs the Facial Pain Unit in the Department of Dentistry at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He also maintains a private orthodontic practice in Toronto with an emphasis on pre-prosthetic and surgical care.
In high school he witnessed a young lady’s tremendous underbite negatively impact her self-esteem. She later underwent orthodontics and jaw surgery and experienced a transformation – both inside and out. He credits her incredible journey as the reason he went into dentistry. “It’s not just the aesthetic change. I think the change that actually happens inside the patient is sometimes even more important than what happens outside. It is all about how we can be of service to our patients and the profound effect we can have on their lives.”
Dr. Freeman maintains that excellence in patient care goes far beyond the technical, “You can do the best work in the world—but the patient has to feel good about the experience and feel good about what has happened. I think that’s just as important, if sometimes not more important, because you want people to leave an encounter feeling better than they felt when they walked in.”
In this age of misinformation, Dr. Freeman further emphasizes the importance of continued research and learning, “You constantly have to educate yourself, educate your patients. It’s always about striving to learn more and do more; and at the end of the day, the care you give will be heightened by that.”
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"…the change that actually happens inside the patient is sometimes even more important than what happens outside."