Good Neighbor Podcast: Mississauga

Why oral surgeons aren’t “just dentists” and how CVOS raises the bar for patient care

• Alanja Simmons

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Think oral surgeons are just dentists with a few extra tools? Gavin from CVOS Oral Surgery pulls back the curtain on what genuine specialty care looks like and why training, volume, and culture can transform a stressful procedure into a confident, well-supported experience. We trace CVOS from its Credit Valley roots to a network serving Halton, Peel, Hamilton, and Niagara, then dive into the clinical and human factors that set outcomes apart: multi‑year hospital residencies, evidence‑based techniques, and a team built to greet anxiety with empathy.

We walk through the services patients ask about most, wisdom teeth removal, complex extractions, and dental implants and unpack how advanced imaging, minimally invasive approaches, and clear pre‑ and post‑op guidance reduce pain and recovery time. Gavin explains the nuanced world of referral-based care, where marketing must inspire patient trust without sidelining the vital role of family dentists and orthodontists. He also shares how strict regulatory and privacy standards shape what healthcare teams can say publicly, and why CVOS favours educational content and measured claims over hype.

What stands out is the end-to-end patient journey: fast first contact after referral, compassionate front-desk support, surgeons who translate complexity into plain language, and follow‑ups that make recovery feel supported rather than solitary. Along the way, we meet the person behind the process a leader who channels stress into exercise and martial arts with his kids, and who believes that a thriving team is the fastest route to excellent care. If you’re considering implants, facing wisdom teeth removal, or guiding a patient toward specialty care, this conversation offers a clear checklist: look for deep training, high surgical volume, respectful referral relationships, and a culture that treats kindness as clinical practice.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow the show, share it with a friend who might be weighing oral surgery, and leave a quick review to help others find thoughtful local stories like this one.


Gavin Rouble

CVOS Oral Surgery

+19053360303

cvosoralsurgery.com

"Since 1979, CVOS Oral Surgery has consistently provided expert oral and maxillofacial treatment to patients throughout the Halton, Peel, Hamilton, and Niagara regions.

CVOS works in partnership with thousands of area dentists, orthodontists, and other healthcare professionals to improve the quality of life of patients by performing both simple and complex oral surgeries - including tooth/wisdom tooth extractions, dental implants, and both corrective and restorative surgery - carried out by extensively trained and experienced oral surgeons using the latest and most effective techniques and technologies available." 

Intro:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Alanja Simmons.

ALanja Simmons :

Welcome to Good Neighbor Podcast, where we share the stories of local businesses and professionals making a positive impact in our community. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Gavin Rouble of CVOS Oral Surgery. Gavin, how's it going?

Gavin Rouble:

I'm doing well, Alanja. How are you today?

ALanja Simmons :

I'm good. Hopefully the coffee doesn't get cold before I get to the coffee shop. We're excited to learn more about you and your work. Tell us about CVOS Oral Surgery and what services do you provide?

Gavin Rouble:

Okay, well, CVOS Oral Surgery first started in 1979. It had one location, which was in actually the Credit Valley area of Mississauga, hence the CV of CVOS standing for Credit Valley. Since then, we have branched further west into the GTA as far as Burlington now. So we have fit in terms of physical locations, we have, of course, Mississauga, right on the same property as Credit Valley Hospital, but we also have clinics in Oakville, Milton, and two in Burlington. This really allows us to treat patients and accept patients all through Halton, Peel, Hamilton, and Niagara regions. We have eight different oral surgeons within our practice and two specialists who are oral pathologists. And amongst them, they are able to provide patients with quite a variety or scope of oral and maxillofacial care, ranging from standard wisdom tooth extractions for patients, single tooth or multiple tooth extractions, if it's a little more complicated, to what we're seeing now, actually is a lot more dental implant placement. Of course, as we have an aging population, people are getting older, but they're not getting quieter. And by that I mean they want to maintain their active lifestyle and they realize that dental implants are a great way to go. This all has all come together to allow us to continue to be one of the largest independently owned and operated oral surgery groups in the province. I would say with the size that we have and the scope that we have, of course, there's pros and cons. But one of the key pros, I would say, for patients is that given the number of patients each of our practitioners, each of our surgeons see every single year, it really doesn't matter if you're a 17-year-old getting your wisdom teeth out, or if you're a 70-year-old having a dental implant placed, our surgeons have literally performed thousands and thousands of these surgeries. And so that experience, that expertise really translates through to the benefit of the patient, of reassuring the patient that they're going to have a very high quality of outcome and that they're going to have the latest and best treatment practices used to minimize how invasive the surgery is, as well as to minimize any pain that may result afterward.

ALanja Simmons :

How did you get started in oral surgery?

Gavin Rouble:

Well, my background with the practice is a little time in the making. About 20 years ago, I joined a consulting firm that dealt specifically with dental. And through that, I learned the inner workings of dental practices. And fast forward to 2018, the ownership group of CBOS oral surgery decided that to achieve their business goals, to achieve the growth, the consistency of service, and also to create a really great workplace where employees like to work, they needed to bring somebody in-house with expertise in those areas. And so I was fortunate to be the one selected for the role because of my business background, my entrepreneurial background. I've really been able to go in and make it a great place to work for staff because I believe that when staff, whether they're our nurses, our reception team, our phone team, when they like to go in to work in the morning, when they like their coworkers, when they like the culture of the organization, that positivity is going to come through to how they treat the patient, to the quality of care, just to the every interaction they have with one another and with patients. So we've been very successful in that area. And I've been there for seven years now, and it's just it's really an amazing organization.

ALanja Simmons :

And in this field, what are some of the myths or misconceptions about oral surgery that you've often come across?

Gavin Rouble:

Great question. I would say the largest one is the fact or the misconception that oral surgeons are simply glorified dentists. The difference is that oral surgery really bridges the gap between medicine and dentistry. So, yes, and of course, it involves the jaw, the teeth, similar to dentistry. But in addition to dental training, surgeons, oral surgeons have to have training and understanding of anatomy, of pathology, oral, pardon me, as well as similar surgical principles to plastic surgery and even neurosurgery, due to the fact that the oral, when I say oral and maxillofacial area, really where I mean is pretty much from, let's say, the eyes down to the neck. That area is so close to the nerve center of the body to the base of the skull, that information is actually critical. And that's something that's not taught in dental school. So, while yes, our surgeons do go through dental school, they then, unlike family dentists, will go on and do a lot of extra training. They'll join a specialty oral surgery program. And like any program for surgeons, a huge part of that extra training involves a residency program, a multi-year residency program in a hospital. So they are working alongside medical students who are training to become cardiovascular surgeons or plastic surgeons, any form of specialty within a hospital. So the analogy I like to use to sort of very simply describe the difference is we all have a family doctor, and that family doctor has a huge knowledge of many different possible things that could be wrong. And they know a lot about the heart and they can tell you how to keep your heart nice and healthy. But I don't want my family doctor cutting into my chest if I'm having a heart attack. I want someone who is specifically trained and has extensive training in the heart. And that's the same idea. Yes, there's a dental aspect to oral surgery, but it goes vastly beyond that.

ALanja Simmons :

And we know marketing is at the heart of every business, as you may know. Who are your target customers and how do you attract them?

Gavin Rouble:

We're we it's a little different for us with respect to identifying customers because we have two distinct groups. Of course, we have the patients who come in and pay for our services, but at the same time, being a specialty like many medical specialties in Ontario, we're referral-based. So people don't just walk in the street and come into our office and say, hey, I want you to remove my tooth. They'll come in from another practitioner. It could be a family dentist, it could be an orthodontist, it could be their family doctor. So the people who send us patients, who refer their patients to us, are also a segment of customers. So we have to be very careful how we market because we have to market in a way that, yes, it attracts patients, it instills in them confidence in the services they'll receive from us, but we have to do it in a way that in no way detracts the value or the importance of the services they received already from their family dentist, because we don't want to alienate those individuals because they're a critical part of the care continuum for patients. So the marketing itself is has to be very balanced. It also has to be very carefully done because we are also regulated by the RCDSO or the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario, who have very strict guidelines into how and what we're allowed to say within our marketing message.

ALanja Simmons :

And have you ever thought about doing your own podcasts?

Gavin Rouble:

I have not. Partially because I don't think people really want to hear about the horror stories of oral surgery. A big part of it too is we have to be careful. Being anything in healthcare, you have to be very careful with the information you provide, A, to ensure it's always accurate, but B, because so much of it involves people. And there's a huge privacy component there that we never ever want to breach.

ALanja Simmons :

And outside of work, what do you do for fun or relaxation?

Gavin Rouble:

Oral surgery within this industry can be very, very stressful. And so I tend to exercise a lot, both for enjoyment and for stress relief. I'm also very fortunate to have two amazing teenagers who they've been in the martial arts ever since they were we little children. They've recently, a few years ago, graduated to the adult class, and I was just sitting there being their ride, and they're like, Dad, come train with us. So I've started doing that as well.

ALanja Simmons :

Amazing. How can a listener learn more about their practice?

Gavin Rouble:

To learn more about the practice, the best way to do that is simply go to cvosoralsurgery.com. That's our . most of the information anyone would ever need about us is there, including locations. But we also have a lot of information, a lot of articles on the website that go into a bit deeper into the things, whether it be a referring dentist or a patient who's coming in for surgery for the first time and want to know what to expect. We believe that providing these people with more information to know what to expect from us is critical and instills confidence in them. So a lot of their answers can be answered there, but on the off chance that they do have a question that's not answered there, they can certainly call our office. We have a team of individuals who are focused on answering questions, answering phones, and they can probably answer any question about CVOS.

ALanja Simmons :

Gavin, what's one thing you like a listener to remember about CVOS oral surgery?

Gavin Rouble:

I think the biggest thing to remember about CVOS is the fact that we focus so heavily on the entire patient journey. From the moment that they have their first phone call, which should be within two weeks of being referred to us, through to their first appointment when they walk through the door, where they're met with someone who's friendly, who is comforting, compassionate, because no one goes to an oral surgery clinic because it's fun. It's a stressful situation. So we want to put our patients at ease. We want to make sure all their questions are answered. We want to make sure that every step of the way they feel supported and that they're in good hands. And of course, the quality of the surgery. We want to make sure that the quality of the surgery is such that we can minimize post-surgical pain. We can minimize the amount of time it takes to recover from a surgery. And we do that by using some of the latest technology and certainly some of the best surgical techniques. And then, of course, all the way through, they'll go home and they'll get follow-up calls from us, from our nursing team to see how they're recovering. Do they have any questions? So every step of the way through that patient's journey, they are taken care of. Great. Thank you very much.

Ontro:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpmississauga.com. That's gnpmississauga.com or call 365 363 9780.