The Society was honoured to present the position of dental nurses from a member’s perspective and the wider dental nursing community. The Society was asked to present the information against the backdrop of 4 questions posed by the General Dental Council:
- What does this data mean to me as a representative of this organisation?
- What does the data mean for the profession?
- How will you use the data?
- What do we need from the dental leaders?
Given 5 minutes to provide a summary was perhaps a challenge in itself. Nevertheless, taking in the task head-on the Society managed to present a balanced picture through the lens of the 36, 257 responses from dental nurses. Did the data give the Society any new pieces of evidence or information? Sadly, no but it did give a wakeup-call to others and brought into full view the challenges of the so-called numerical data sets held by the General Dental Council.
What became apparent was that the equivalent of half of the dental nurses from each nation responded to the survey and more than anything we were reminded that this was simply a snapshot of July 2024 and that by August 2024 we had lost almost 3000 dental nurses. The data also made clearer the number of registrants holding a dental nursing qualification who work as a different registrable group.
Key were our thoughts on what we want to see from leaders, this focused on a) Exploration of red tape and bureaucracy to remove barriers to better ways of working. b) Investment and time into research to support better ways of enhancing dental nursing and c) to establish a sustainable, happy and well workforce, with opportunities to progress.
In summary, we focused on having a creative and ambitious plan that provides opportunity and purpose for dental nurses.
We are grateful to Fiona Ellwood for presenting this vital information on behalf of the profession. To read the full GDC report please click on the following link https://www.gdc-uk.org/about-us/our-organisation/reports/working-patterns-data