The Society of British Dental Nurses has been instrumental in contributing to the Dental Professional Alliance response to the Dental Recovery Plan for England. Further commentary from the Society is after the Dental Professional Alliance announcement.
From our perspective we have more questions than answers and we hope that pending discussions will shed light on what this means for dental nursing and what role the dental nurse will be expected to play. As a professional group dental nurses have the training and capacity to apply their skills more widely and should very much be part of the solution. Equally, we want to explore the barriers to this and continue to raise these questions with the regulator and the department of health. Dental nursing has on the one hand moved forwards, but on the otherhand is stuck in an outdated period of time which does not acknowledge new levels of knowledge and skills owned and gained by dental nurses, where skills , technology, techniques, equipment and materials have moved on. In a time when our workforce is under pressure and where applications to enter the field are depleting we believe the recovery plan must be reflect in the contract reform and beyond this, in regulation.
