Renee Stephens @ MORR Dental Solutions

My four-day externship with Ms. Maria Melone was so much more than I could have expected. Before the externship, when I first read about what Maria does, I imagined her being someone who works with numbers in an office. However, as a pre-dental student, what attracted me to the externship was that Maria works strictly with dentists, although it was still a bit unclear to me what she did for her job.

When I arrived on Monday, I was pleasantly surprised to learn several things about Maria’s job. Her and her three partners started the company, MORR Dental Solutions, only a few years ago. Since then, Maria has been working hard to establish her company, which has already come a long way. Maria works with dentists and dental specialists across the country to help value their practices, facilitate buy-ins and buy-outs, as well as provide several other services. While she does crunch numbers in her office as a part of her job, she also communicates often with clients in-person, over the phone, and through email, travels to see dental practices first-hand to help with her valuations, and provides emotional support to her clients.

Throughout the week, Maria told me a lot about her job, allowed me to sit in on both in-person and over-the-phone meetings, and gave me projects to work on that helped me understand how number crunching helps with her valuation work. The knowledge that I have gained from evaluating numbers and listening to Maria’s explanations will help me immensely when I become a dentist and am looking to buy and manage my own practice. I now know what aspects of a dental practice give it the most value on the market.

When sitting in on one of Maria’s meetings, I was excited to hear that she will be speaking on behalf of her company in January at a conference in Boston called the Yankee Dental Congress, where 28,000 dentists and other professionals in the dental industry will be in attendance. I expressed my interest in attending, and was invited to come help out with some things at the conference. I will somehow have to find a way up to Massachusetts again for that, because I would really love to volunteer my time, listen to Maria speak, and hopefully get the chance to meet many dentists from New England and other parts of the country. In addition, I actually got the chance to visit Boston already! Maria was kind enough to drive me all the way there and take me to a restaurant for some authentic New England seafood. She is a phenomenal and fun person, both in and out of the office.

My week at MORR Dental Solutions has prepared me for my future more than I could have hoped for. I now see how much more beneficial it was for me to spend my week with Maria rather than to have spent it gaining more shadowing hours with a dentist, as I already have a significant amount of hours shadowing dentists and specialists. This externship has given me a different perspective of the dental field that will give me a leg up when it comes time to operate a practice of my own. I give my endless thanks to Maria for everything she has done for me this week and I look forward to hopefully seeing her again in January!