Practice Stories
General dentist, UK · 20 years in practice
A UK dentist who requalified in a second country after training in Ukraine explains why she calls herself "camp AI" — and why the tool she trusts most still isn't allowed to make the call.
Katrina Akil's relationship with dentistry started on the wrong side of the chair. "I was one of those naughty children who used to eat a lot of sweets and had a lot of cavities," she says. "So I ended up being on a dental chair non-stop with a lecturing, crying, big hands in my mouth." Most kids leave that experience wanting nothing more to do with dentists. She left it wanting to become one — better than the ones she'd had. She was seven or eight when she told her mother. She never wavered from it, qualifying first in Ukraine, then requalifying from scratch in the UK, where she's now spent 20 years in face-to-face restorative practice. "I'm the lucky person who goes to work and I treat it as a hobby," she says. "I really truly love it."
Two decades in general dentistry means Dr. Kat has watched technology arrive in waves — new techniques, then digital tools, then scanners, then diagnostic aids. When AI showed up, she didn't treat it as a rupture from that pattern. "AI it was just a natural progression to the human evolution really," she says, "but I totally get it because it's so big and it's so new." She describes UK dentistry as splitting into two camps right now: one embracing the shift, one "still burying their hand head in the sand." She doesn't leave any ambiguity about which side she's on. "I'm the camp AI," she says — and she means it practically, not as a slogan.
What that looks like day to day is unglamorous and specific. Consultations that used to take her "hours and sometimes weeks" to write up now take five minutes, summarized and sent to the patient by email, video included, ready for them to review at home. The effect isn't abstract to her — it's time, returned. "I just love it that I've got extra 10 minutes of my consultation to myself," she says. "I know I don't have to rush and write notes. I know I can connect and explain and then I can dictate and everything will be done for me. So it's really it's a beautiful experience."
Dr. Kat doesn't tell nervous colleagues to catch up all at once. Her advice runs the other direction entirely. "Do not over complicate, simplify — that's the only way forward," she says. "If we trying to run at 100 miles an hour, we're going to break our legs." Her starting point is almost domestic: open a language model the way you'd open your fridge, and ask it something as ordinary as what to cook for dinner. Do that daily, she says, "and by doing that, it's already start creating a small habit — it's like brushing teeth, right? We don't think about it, you just do it." Only after that habit takes hold does she suggest reaching for anything more — a subscription, then eventually an agent that can help with financial reports or patient messages. Even then, she's careful about the metaphor she reaches for: "I always look at AI as still training. It's like a trainee. You need to explain exactly what you want from it."
For all her enthusiasm, Dr. Kat holds one line firmly. She can imagine AI eventually helping flag patterns in a scan or an X-ray — "the eye who could identify things and present the picture" — but she's clear about where the authority stops. "It's us who's going to pick and find the pattern and actually communicate this to the patient," she says. "The clinical judgment should stay with the clinician." Her deepest measure of a good visit hasn't changed with any of the tools around it: "For me it's a two thing. It's a calmness and clarity." A patient who isn't rushed, who understands what's happening to their own body, is a patient who can actually make a decision about their care — and no amount of automation replaces that conversation.
She's currently exploring one frontier she hasn't solved yet: an AI-assisted protocol for patients who have a dental emergency abroad, alone, unable to reach anyone, panicking. Something that could respond immediately — "don't panic, drink water, take some painkillers" — while a real dentist gets looped in. It's not built. It's a problem she's still turning over, the same way she turns over every tool before she trusts it near a patient: "It's a tool," she says. "You could prepare a fantastic delicious meal with a love for your family, or you can use that knife completely differently in the wrong circumstances."
Watch the conversation to hear how she actually built her own five-minute documentation habit, and where she's stuck on the emergency-abroad idea next.