Dr Sharonne Zaks

Dr Sharonne Zaks AM has 25 years of experience in private and public practice in Melbourne and regional Victoria. She has a special interest in working with anxious and phobic patients and survivors of sexual assault and trauma, who travel from all over Australia to see her.

The compassionate approach Dr Zaks developed benefits patients, clinicians, and staff, and is being taught locally and internationally.

It incorporates the trauma informed principles, her clinical experience, and her ongoing research into dental anxiety, phobia, and trauma, including collaboration with the Centres Against Sexual Assault (CASA), family violence experts, and others.

The free video resources she created are being used by organisations, health professionals, and survivors around the world.Sharonne is passionate about improving the experience of health care for all. She presented to over 5,000 people at TEDx in Sydney, at the Australian Dental Congress, the FDI World Dental Congress, to the BSC at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, and at many other conferences and events around Australia.

Dr Zaks’s groundbreaking work has attracted global media attention with interviews by the ABC, BBC, SBS, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, and many others in print, on the radio, podcasts and online. Her work has also been featured in a book, distributed globally.

Sharonne is currently setting up a social enterprise trauma-informed dental service which will be the first of its kind, with clinical, research and education arms.

Dr Zaks’s contribution to the profession was recognised in 2019 with fellowships of the Pierre Fauchard Academy (FPFA) and the International College of Dentists (FICD). She received the ADAVB Dentistry Achievement award for 2021, and was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2023, recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours for her ‘significant service to dentistry and to the arts’.