Apprentice dental nurse Review

My role mainly consists of chair side assistance to a dentist and ensuring daily tasks such as the decontamination process are fulfilled. It is also important and a dental nurse that you are kind, compassionate and readily available to have conversations with potentially very nervous patients. Your day to day role is no different than what your job will be once qualified

Conversational and organisational skills are skills that are developed quite quickly as a dental nurse as you need to be readily available to make conversation with and distract potentially nervous patients. You also learn to be more efficient in you organisational and time keeping skills as you need to stick to a busy schedule whilst also ensuring you smaller daily tasks are met and be able to adapt if you go off schedule.

The job and the patients that you see on a day to day basis are wonderful and it is such a great position to have for someone who is unsure of what to do next in life. However the course content is far to detailed for what the day to day job is and it’s information that is completely irrelevant.

When I first started the course the company I work for had no clue what they were doing but my course provider was very supportive! But over the last few months it’s been impossible to get ahold of my course mentor as she is so busy. I was meant to sit an exam feb of 2021 and it’s now may 2021 and I am still unable to sit it.

To be honest, it’s up and down. I had no induction and was chucked straight into the role. With the course content being so I’m depth my fellow nurses are struggling to support me on the course content either. I had to really pushed to get my allocated off the job training hours but since having to show my employers that I have to have that time they’ve been fairly consistent of giving me that time.

As mentioned in a previous answer, my training provider is quite difficult to get a hold of. Questions may be asked and an answer might not be given for over a week. By that point I have needed to go to lots of different forums to get some support to be able to stay on my course schedule. The resources they also provide are unclear and not well organised. The resources they provide also don’t cover the content in the exams.

The qualification I don’t think is absolutely necessary at all to be able to do the basic day to day job of a dental nurse. The qualification very much looks into the science/microbiology side of the role and not much into your day to day responsibilities as a chair side dental nurse.

For my specific workplace there is VERY LITTLE extra activities. If any at all. It is very much; you come to work, keep your head down, get on with the job and go home. The only positive of that is that it keeps your home and work life very separate.

Yes

The role of dental nurse is very easy to do and as mentioned previously it allows you to keep home and work life completely separate. You’re not often asked to take work home with you and the day to day tasks are very repetitive and not much changes apart from slight tweaks for specific appointments.

Be prepared for a very repetitive job and most dental practices will pay you basic apprentice wages. With private practices the patients and pretty much all lovely and willing for a chat if you are! You also need to be prepared to follow strict cross infection policies and patient care that cannot be deviated from and you cannot cut corners. You should also be prepared to work quickly and in time with strict schedules and adapt quickly if something were to change.