Marilee Sears

Background

About Marilee Sears

I began my career in dentistry as a sterilization assistant in my dad's dental practice when I was just 12 years old. Over the past 20 years, I've worked as a dental assistant, front office, hygiene, and in practice management. I was able to work in a lot of dental practices during my first seven years as a dental hygienist (73 to be exact), before my husband and I finally settled down in the Seattle area. I realized that many offices didn't have a clear system for diagnosing and treating periodontal disease and, as a result, a lot of disease was going untreated. In 2006 I founded Integrity in Practice, a hygiene consulting practice to help dental teams treat periodontal disease early in their patients and improve their treatment acceptance rate both for restorative and hygiene services. In 2012, my world came to a stop when my father, who was still practicing dentistry at 77 years of age, was diagnosed with leukemia. I stepped in to manage his orthodontic practice and, eventually transitioned it to another dentist. My father's battle with leukemia didn't last long-he passed away November of 2012 and I'm sad to say that the whole time he was battling for his life, I was spending long hours at his practice. I always believed in the importance of planning and having systems in place in dentistry; systems allow for better patient care, better patient experiences (because consistency breeds trust) and improved production. But, because of my experience, I'm dedicated to helping dentists understand the most important reason to have systems: because they allow your practice to keep moving forward when the unexpected happens-and the unexpected happens all the time. I'm dedicated to educating dentists about the importance of planning and systems so that no other family in the position my family was placed in; needing to take care of business when all you want to do is take care of family.