Meet the members: Dr Deepika Samal 13th Apr 2026
Meet the members: Deepika Samal, an NZDA Wellbeing Champion and familiar face at the practice she’s worked at for more than a decade
As an associate dentist at a busy Palmerston North practice, it's safe to say Deepika has a lot on her plate. She's spent 14 years caring for patients ranging from toddlers to centenarians, and lately, she's taken on another role that’s just as rewarding - caring for her colleagues. As one of NZDA's Wellbeing Champions, she's become a quiet but important presence for fellow dentists who might be finding things tough.
Having experienced burnout earlier in her own career, she felt a personal connection to the Wellbeing Champions initiative when it launched in 2024. "Dentistry can be demanding and quite isolating. I sometimes look back and think, if there was someone available to me at that time when I was finding it difficult, my experience might have been quite different."
These days, NZDA has 15 Wellbeing Champions throughout the country, each trained in communications skills and with Mental Health First Aid certification through St John. It’s all about dentists helping dentists, with a focus on encouraging meaningful conversations. "We're not here to be counsellors,” says Deepika, “we're more like facilitators. We’re not here to tell people what to do, it’s more about helping people work out what’s best for them."
Deepika is candid about the pressures facing dentists today, from a rise in online complaints and increasing compliance demands, to the financial weight of student loans and the cost of buying into a practice. "We trained to be dentists, to do dental procedures. We didn't train on how to run a business." It's a landscape that makes the Wellbeing Champions programme, and NZDA membership more broadly, all the more important.
Despite being a proud longtime NZDA member who is passionate about dentistry, Deepika’s path to the profession was largely unplanned. At 18, she headed to Otago for a general health science year, not entirely sure where she'd land. "I always did quite well academically and I knew I wanted to work with people. I got a place in dentistry and thought, ‘this sounds pretty good!’" The appeal of plenty of patient interaction and solid job security sealed the deal, and she hasn't looked back since.
She's been based at the same Palmerston North practice since graduating in 2012, something she acknowledges is a little unusual. "I never expected to still be here 14 years later, but here I am! I love working with such a wide range of people, from children under five, to my oldest patient who is 103.”
When it comes to NZDA membership, the Wellbeing Champions role is just one piece of the picture. Deepika values the collegiality and peer support that comes with belonging to her local branch, the access to webinars and resources, and the annual conference which she attends regularly.
“I like how NZDA supports collegiality across our profession. When you’re working day in and day out, it can be quite isolating. But being an NZDA member means you belong to your local branch, you have the opportunity to chat with other dentists, and there is a lot of peer support.”
But it's the advocacy work that she finds particularly meaningful, especially for dentists in private practice who might otherwise feel their voices go unheard.
"It's nice to know the association is lobbying for our benefit. When it comes to things like government policy change, we need to have our voices heard as a collective, and the NZDA goes in to bat for us. I think that’s really valuable.”
