dos Médicos Dentists who accompanies us, legislates, and gives us the rules so that we can advertise our services, but always in a way that will never hurt our colleagues, so that we can always live in a cordial way, united by the spirit of science, by the search for treatments innovative, better materials, and in a spirit of mutual aid between peers. We CERO Team, we already asked for help, we already helped, we worked together with other teams and colleagues, which is normal in a profession as specific and demanding as ours

Why do we advertise our treatments?

When we advertise our services, our facilities, our own curricula, we even show the faces of our entire team, so that our patients, our future clients can get to know who we are, our services, our facilities, so you will feel a bit like part of this great Family that is CERO already during the first visit. And, during the appointments, we present several cases of other patients who we treated previously, so that each patient can identify with the different possibilities of treatment, also allowing them to check and verify that we can attain the goals we set. We’re just not building castles in the sand…

Another reason to spread what we do is that we enjoy that those who follow us, for instance in social media, realize, long before they decide to visit us, whether that kind of treatment may or may not meet their expectations.

We must not forget that we live in a society that is increasingly informed and more prepared to discuss solutions, to be a key part of the decision-making process. Our team, clinicians and patients are all part of the same solution. We collaborate at the same decision level. That old paternalistic view of a physician who treated the patient almost impersonally, by “son or girl”, and even treated patients in a depersonalized manner, has been shelved for good. We also have a duty to show our facilities with Google virtual tours, so that the patient can visualize the sort of environment where they will be treated, even before going to the clinic, hence curbing the stress and anxiety levels, arriving at a more familiar environment.

In search of the peacefulness that excellence demands

We are very serene with our work, we do what we like, we do something for which we have been prepared and trained, therefore your treatment falls within extensive margins of security and predictability, we are perfectly qualified to accomplish what we want to.

Our training and accumulated experience

Be absolutely sure of one thing: we do nothing that we are not highly trained for and prepared to do. We fall into a category of professionals who accomplish what they promise. Not only do we say and claim that we do it, we do it indeed and, for this reason, yet another one, we show what we do in our videos. The other reason is that, simply put, our followers and patients asked us to reveal things. And, for the sake of truth, those who don’t want to see it, whom we respect equally, because they can’t or simply don’t want to, have that legitimate right, simply by not opening the videos or images with contents of treatments and more explicit surgeries.

Always the old prejudice

When we talk about Medical Tourism, one of the first things that come to mind is prejudice.
Prejudice about the unknown; prejudice about traveling to another location, the patient’s prejudice of being seen by a highly specialized team; prejudice about something new; prejudice for any reason whatsoever.
In the beginning, when this topic started to be discussed in Portugal, we all also had this prejudice.

Natural selection

Like everything in life, those who don’t evolve end up vanishing. It reminds us a little of when, in 2010, the Portuguese Dental Association forced the legalization of every Clinic and Dentistry establishment. I crossed paths with several situations of older colleagues, and others not so old, who simply preferred to close their clinics, and start to work for someone else, than to upgrade their facilities and adapt them to our day. Everything evolves, like the concept of patient/client itself, with the due letter of their rights and duties always protected by both parties. Gone are the days when there was very little supply in the national market for dental treatments. There were situations when those who performed dental treatments were not even dentists. From usurpers of titles and functions, to curious individuals and criminals, everyone had their place under the cloak of malpractice, which was Dentistry’s reality back then. And, during those times, since there was very little supply, each clinic had many patients, and if there was frustration or lack of quality control, the end was always the same: if this patient doesn’t come back, there are thirty other individuals at the door waiting to book an appointment. And, amid so much atrocity, of so much illegality, of so many poorly executed treatments (something still reflected in older patients who come now to our clinics), the best recipe was no words, no advertising, no disclosure.

KEEP THIS IN MIND!

I’m not trying to say, not even ironically or slyly, that there were no top-notch medical procedures and professionals, quite the opposite. There were also lots of usurpers of titles and functions, because the strict control enforced by the Dental Association was something nonexistent back then.
Is there anyone who never heard the story of the clinic where the owner died or retired and become an assistant during appointments? Or the story of the fourth-grader dentist who left the army and plucked teeth out? Or the lab tech, the famous “tooth mechanic”, who also fix stuff in mouths without the law allowing him to?

Historical Facts In Portuguese Dental Medicine

We must not forget that the first Dental Medicine Degree in Portugal dates back to the early 80s and that our Dental Association, formerly attached to the Portuguese Medical Association, dates back to 1998. Therefore, everything is still very recent, quite young, from a historical point of view and, in this way, we can say that the Association itself has been growing and learning with the dentists, and we learn from it as well, when it comes to interpreting these new times and this new era of digitization and social media.
And, with this, our generation of Portuguese Dentists in activity is the most differentiated, the most specialized we have ever had. Proof of this is the number of Portuguese professionals who are very well accepted in other countries that require our professionals, where there is a surplus within our borders, to other countries where there is a shortage.

Why Portugal?