Dental Therapists work with both children and adults to provide information to patients about oral hygiene and how to care for your teeth along with routine dental services.
Working life
Working as a Dental Therapist will mean that you’ll take part in a variety of different tasks during your working day. These can include:
- Working with patients on either an individual or small group basis
- Providing a scaling and polishing service to patients
- Taking dental x-rays
- Making impressions of patients’ teeth
- Fixing crowns
- Extracting teeth
- Providing routine fillings
Dental Therapists work in a variety of settings including:
- Community dental services
- Acute hospital settings
- General dental practices
- Social Care settings
- Private practice
Dental Therapists can work with service users on a one-to-one basis, in small groups or in larger groups depending on the client’s specific need.
Dental Therapists evaluate a patient’s oral health, monitor gum disease, and provide dental health education and can perform simple restorations, such as fillings, and place preformed crowns on baby teeth.
Dental therapists can also remove sutures, administer inhalation sedation, and provide tooth whitening under a dentist’s prescription.
Requirements
Becoming a Dental Therapist requires you to complete a diploma or degree course in dental therapy that has been approved by the General Dental Council (GDC) and you will then need to register with the General Dental Council before you can practice.
Entry requirements for Dental Therapist programmes usually include:
- Two or three A levels
- Five GCSEs (grades 9 to 4/A to C)
- A recognised dental nursing qualification
Subjects studied to become a Dental Therapist include:
- Preventative dentistry
- Dental health education
- Dental pathology
- Simple restorative procedures for baby and permanent teeth
- Extractions of teeth
- Radiography and pharmacology
Diplomas in dental therapy usually take around 27 months to achieve, depending on the dental hospital at which you study. Some dental schools offer courses on a part time basis for dental hygienists wishing to qualify as dental therapists.
Personal characteristics
To work successfully as a Dental Therapist you need to consider your own personal characteristics. You would need to have the following attributes or similar:
- Be resilient and open to new ways of working
- Be supportive of service users who experience nervousness related to dental procedures
- Have a non-judgemental and supportive attitude
- Be able to work with a variety of different people from differing backgrounds and experiences
Skills required
To work successfully as a Dental Therapist, you need to consider the skills that you have. You would need to demonstrate the following:
- Be well organised and able to plan your time
- Be able to communicate with a variety of people using different methods
- Be able to put service users at ease quickly
- Be patient
- Have a caring nature
- Have highly developed technical and clinical skills
- Be confident to work alone when necessary
- Have attention to detail and be able to follow policies and procedures
Training and development opportunities
Once qualified and registered as a Dental Therapist, you can continue to develop your career over time. You’ll have access to a yearly continuing professional development (CPD) check-in where you can discuss any additional training needs or qualifications you would like to achieve.
You could undertake additional training to offer additional services to patients and other development opportunities within dental therapy include becoming a practice manager or orthodontic therapist. If you enjoy working with other professionals, you could also become an educator and train other dental therapists to carry out the role.
Pay and benefits
Dental Therapists in the NHS usually work 37.5 hours a week and you could be required to work flexibly over 7 days depending on the setting you work in. You could also be required to work evenings and weekends on occasion.
Dental Therapists working in NHS settings are paid using the Agenda for Change (AfC) system and will typically start their career on AfC band 5 or 6 but with experience, further training and additional qualifications, can progress further up the pay scale.
Dental Therapists working in other settings will have alternative working hours and pay and they will be paid according to the employer they work for.
Other benefits of working as a Dental Therapist in the NHS include access to a pension scheme, health service discounts such as a Blue Light Card and 27 days of annual leave in addition to bank holidays.