Meghan Chard is many things at once — principal dentist, practice owner, mum of three, and quietly passionate evangelist for childhood airway health.
In this episode, she sits down with Payman for a wide-ranging conversation that takes in meeting her husband Simon at dental school, buying his family's Leicestershire practice a month before their first child arrived, and the very particular chaos of juggling clinical work, business ownership, and family life.
Then there's the airway thread — and once Meghan gets going, you can see why she's hooked. Sleep disordered breathing in children is, she argues, a dramatically underscreened problem, and dentists are uniquely placed to spot it.
In This Episode
00:00:55 — Introductions and Rothley Lodge
00:02:30 — Meeting Simon at King's
00:05:10 — Life as associates, then buying the practice
00:06:05 — Running the practice: ops vs. direction
00:08:25 — The dental family advantage
00:12:45 — Learning the numbers — and how Pärla helped
00:13:00 — Staff management and the art of delegation
00:15:30 — Superpowers and self-awareness
00:17:35 — The juggle: three kids, two clinical days, one nanny
00:20:00 — Something has to give
00:26:10 — Mary McAleese, Belfast, and family roots
00:30:05 — Childhood airway obstruction: signs, symptoms and the dentist's role
00:40:05 — Treatment: referral, palatal expansion and the habit-corrector appliance
00:54:10 — Case studies and outcomes
00:58:35 — Pärla: the emotional roller coaster of consumer business
01:05:35 — Covid and the darkest days of practice ownership
01:08:20 — Dental school, inferiority, and graduating second in the year
01:16:30 — Blackbox thinking
01:26:25 — Faith, spirituality, and community
01:30:50 — Succession planning
01:35:10 — How Meghan ended up in dentistry
01:39:15 — Best lecture: Malcolm Levinkind on teeth, posture and the body
01:41:50 — Favourite resources: Breath, Breathe Sleep Thrive, Saved by the Mouth
01:42:45 — Sauna obsession and longevity habits
01:43:55 — Fantasy dinner party
01:45:40 — What she'd do differently
About Meghan Chard
Meghan Chard is a principal dentist and co-owner of Rothley Lodge Dental Practice in Leicestershire, which she and her husband Simon Chard took over from his family in 2018. Alongside clinical practice and running the business, she has developed a keen interest in childhood sleep disordered breathing and consults for a paediatric airway appliance brand. She is also a niece-in-law of Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland.
