Melbourne is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. More than a third of its residents were born overseas. Across the metropolitan area, dozens of languages are spoken at home, in schools, in workplaces, and in community life. In suburbs like Epping, Craigieburn, Tarneit, and Berwick, cultural diversity is not a demographic footnote — it’s the defining character of the community.
Yet many healthcare settings, including dental practices, still operate primarily in English, with teams that reflect a narrow slice of the population they serve. This creates real barriers — not just inconvenience, but genuine gaps in informed consent, clinical communication, and the kind of trust that makes healthcare work.
Core Dental is different. Across our seven Melbourne locations, our teams speak a wide range of languages and bring cultural backgrounds that reflect the communities we work in. This isn’t a marketing position. It’s how we’ve built our practices — with intention, because we believe it makes care better.
Why Language Matters in Healthcare
Healthcare communication is different from most other kinds of communication. When a clinician is explaining a diagnosis, a treatment plan, the risks and benefits of a procedure, or the instructions for recovery, the stakes are high. Getting this wrong — or not fully getting it at all — can lead to poor decisions, worse outcomes, or a patient who nods along without having genuinely understood what they’ve consented to.
Informed consent is a legal and ethical cornerstone of Australian healthcare. It requires that a patient understands what is being proposed, what the alternatives are, what the risks and benefits are, and that they have genuinely agreed to proceed. “Informed” is the operative word. Consent obtained through a language barrier — through simplified language and hoping for the best — is not fully informed consent.
Beyond the formal question of consent, there’s the matter of anxiety. Dental anxiety is common enough among patients who communicate fluently in English. Among patients navigating a new country, a new system, and a language they’re still learning, the additional stress of not fully understanding what’s happening — or feeling unable to ask questions that matter to them — compounds that anxiety significantly.
When a patient can speak to their dentist in their own language, the dynamic changes completely. They can ask the questions they actually have, not just the ones that survive translation. They can express their concerns, describe their pain accurately, and understand the explanation they receive. The appointment becomes a conversation rather than a managed transaction.
Languages Spoken Across Core Dental
Core Dental’s teams collectively speak a wide range of languages across our locations.
These include (but are not limited to) Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic, Greek, Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Sinhala, as well as various European and African languages spoken by team members across different practices.
The specific language capability at each location reflects the communities in that suburb. Our Epping practice, serving one of Melbourne’s most linguistically diverse northern suburbs, has team members who can assist patients speaking South Asian and South East Asian languages. Our Tarneit and Craigieburn locations, in Melbourne’s rapidly growing western and northern corridors, reflect the Indian subcontinent communities that have made those areas home. Our other locations similarly draw on team members whose backgrounds match the communities around them.
This isn’t by accident. When building our teams, language ability and cultural competence are genuinely valued — not as afterthoughts, but as clinical assets.
Cultural Sensitivity Beyond Language
Language is the most visible aspect of cultural inclusivity in healthcare, but it’s not the whole picture. Cultural sensitivity extends to understanding different attitudes toward health and the body, different norms around family involvement in medical decisions, different levels of familiarity with the Australian healthcare system, and different cultural backgrounds around pain expression, eye contact, physical touch, and the authority dynamics between patient and clinician.
A patient from a culture where questioning a doctor’s recommendation is seen as disrespectful may not voice concerns they genuinely have. A patient unfamiliar with Australian healthcare systems may not understand that they have options, that second opinions are acceptable, or that they’re entitled to take a treatment plan home and think about it.
Core Dental’s team members, many of whom share cultural backgrounds with the patients they see, understand these dynamics from the inside. They can create the space for questions to be asked, for concerns to be voiced, and for patients to feel genuinely seen as individuals rather than processed through a system.
Informed Consent as a Genuine Standard
We take informed consent seriously. Before any treatment begins, we explain what’s proposed, what alternatives exist, what the procedure involves, and what the patient can expect. This explanation needs to be genuinely understood — not technically delivered in English to someone who was nodding politely.
When a team member can explain a treatment plan to a patient in their preferred language, the quality of that consent process is demonstrably better. Patients ask more questions. They make better decisions. They leave with a clearer understanding of what will happen and what they need to do at home. And they come back for follow-up appointments, because they trusted the process.
We will always accommodate a patient’s language preference where we have capability at that location. If you’re booking an appointment and language support is important to you, please let us know when you call — we’ll match you with the appropriate team member or confirm that we have capability to assist in your preferred language.
Supporting Recent Arrivals and New Communities
Melbourne continues to welcome migrants, refugees, and international students from across the world. For many new arrivals, navigating the Australian healthcare system — including dental care — is one of the early challenges of settlement. The system is different from what many people are used to; the cost structure, the referral pathways, health fund options, Medicare arrangements, and the relationship between general and specialist dental care may all be unfamiliar.
Core Dental’s team members who share migrant backgrounds understand this navigation challenge from personal experience. They can explain how the system works, what patients are entitled to, how health funds work, what Medicare’s Child Dental Benefits Schedule covers, and how to get the most from dental care in Australia.
This kind of guidance — delivered by someone who gets it — is genuinely valuable, and it’s one of the ways Core Dental’s diverse teams make a practical difference to people’s lives beyond the clinical treatment itself.
A Reflection of Melbourne
Core Dental was founded by Dr Kia Pajouhesh in 1993 — an immigrant himself, who built a practice group from the ground up over 34 years in a city he chose to make home. The values that shaped Core Dental from the beginning include a genuine commitment to the whole Melbourne community — not just the parts of it that happen to communicate most easily in the language of the healthcare system.
Every Melbourne suburb has its own character. Every community has its own languages, its own cultural patterns, its own health needs and concerns. We’ve built our teams to reflect that diversity because we believe that healthcare — at its best — meets people where they are, not where it’s most convenient for the healthcare system to find them.
If you’ve been hesitant about dental care because of language or cultural concerns, please reach out. There’s a good chance that someone on our team will be able to speak with you in your preferred language, understand your background, and make your appointment a genuinely comfortable experience. That’s what we’re here for.