Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Dr Thomas van Heumen has been with the Australian Defence Force for two decades. Now Lieutenant Colonel, he’s charting the way dental care is delivered to uniformed defence personnel. By John Burfitt
It was a university lunchtime seminar in 2005 that set Dr Thomas van Heumen on his dental career path. In his second year of dental studies at the University of Queensland, Dr van Heumen attended a presentation about careers in the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
“During the session, representatives from the army, navy and air force outlined what a career in the ADF might look like. Soon after, Dr van Heumen reached out to recruitment and later was commissioned as an officer in the Australian Regular Army.
The sponsored pathway meant the army would fund the remainder of his dental degree and provide an annual salary in exchange for five years of service within the Royal Australian Army Dental Corps (RAADC) after graduation.
“It was a great deal and seemed like a good way to start a career and have an adventure,” he says. “I had been working nightshifts at Coles while studying, and instead here was this offer to complete my studies with full support.”
That five years turned into a long-term career with the ADF. Two decades on, Lieutenant Colonel van Heumen is the senior dentist overseeing dental care for all uniformed personnel across the ADF.
A career is born
Born in the Netherlands, Dr van Heumen moved to Australia when he was eight, before returning to the Netherlands to finish high school. “I knew I would come back to Australia,” he says, and did so at age 18 to study at UQ.
While there’s no family history in dentistry, there is a proud van Heumen legacy of military service. His father completed national service in the Netherlands, and his grandfather was in the Dutch resistance fighting against the Nazis during World War II.
Dr van Heumen admits dentistry was not the plan when he began his science degree. “In that first week at university, I sat next to somebody who told me he wanted to get into dentistry and that’s the first time I’d even thought about dentistry as a career,” he recalls.
I really wasn’t enjoying private practice and soon found the urge to study periodontics. So I asked the army if they would sponsor my specialist post-graduate studies, and fortunately they did—and I have been back ever since.
Dr Thomas van Heumen
He was at the end of his second year in 2026 when he formally joined the ADF-sponsored scheme that saw him through to graduation in 2008. Soon after, he was posted to the army base in Townsville to begin full-time clinical work.
The clinical focus of a dental officer is to ensure all defence personnel are fit and ready to deploy. “You’re treating them, whether it’s routine work or emergency care, to ensure they’re completely dentally healthy,” he says.
Those early days with army had a profound impact. “I loved that time as there was such great camaraderie with junior dentists, nurses and doctors,” he remembers. “We were part of this new community learning how to be of service as health professionals.
“And there was the mentoring, and I relied on those senior uniform dentists to teach me so much, both clinically and from a military perspective. We also had contractor dentists who were fantastic. As a junior dentist, I was surrounded by people with a wealth of knowledge to learn from.”
Leaving the ADF
After Townsville, Dr van Heumen was posted to an army hospital unit in Brisbane. Once his five years of service obligation were completed, he left the ADF to explore dentistry in a single-chair private practice.
“Coming from an environment where we had up to 15 dentists in one unit, I found private practice isolating, and quickly became routine,” he says.
After completing further studies with the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons, Dr van Heumen found himself at a crossroads.
“I really wasn’t enjoying private practice and soon found the urge to study periodontics,” he says. “So I asked the army if they would sponsor my specialist postgraduate studies, and fortunately they did—and I have been back ever since. So I was able to study for three years full-time while holding my role within the army.”
Returning to the ADF
He graduated from The University of Melbourne as a Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (Periodontology) in 2018 and found himself back in Brisbane as Officer Commanding of a Dental Company, overseeing dentists, assistants and an administrative team totalling 50 personnel.
Then came bigger roles. As a Lieutenant Colonel in Canberra, he became responsible for health governance across the army. “That was not naturally a dentist role, but I loved the challenge of it,” he says.
But it is ADF’s service to wider Australian communities that Dr van Heumen is particularly proud of. He cites a deployment to the Army Aboriginal Community Assistance Program in remote WA as a stand-out. “Just being able to treat the locals and give them the best possible dental care for the two months I was there was very rewarding, as I knew I was making a big difference,” he says.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, he led a team of 100 ADF personnel in Victoria to conduct urgent audits and education in infection prevention and control standards at over 600 aged-care facilities.
These days, Dr van Heumen is based in Sydney and is the senior dentist responsible for governance of on-base dental services across 40 defence clinics nationwide. His role spans clinical oversight, policy, workforce management and the rollout of the new dental e-Record system.
He also spends one day a fortnight on the tools at a navy base clinic. “That experience is really essential for me, to maintain my clinical skills and get a good idea of what our personnel are presenting with,” he says.
He’s getting a broader idea of current dental trends in his private practice work at Sydney Perio, a role he began 12 months ago.
“The ADF has become more flexible, so that affords me time to also work in private practice, and I am enjoying the balance that gives me.”
As for his future with the ADF, Dr van Heumen is keeping his options open. “This has worked for me as I have a strong sense of duty and want to continue to give back to this country,” he says. “There may be a point where I need to step aside and maybe then I will go full-time into private practice. I would still stay in defence in a part-time reservist capacity, but for the moment, I am still getting so much out of being of service where I am.”
