Senior Dental Nurse in Wolverhampton

Main area: Senior Dental Nurse Special Care Dental Service

Grade: Band 5

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time - 37.5 hours per week

Job ref: 225-DIV1-8206408

Employer: The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust

Site: Pennfields Health Centre (All SCDS sites)

Town: Wolverhampton

Salary: £32,073 - £39,043 per annum

Salary period: Yearly

Closing: 07/10/2026 23:59

Job overview:

To organise and work alongside other Dental Nurses and as directed by the Principal Dental Nurse. This includes overseeing the efficient running of clinics and supporting where required within our community site clinics, domiciliary visits, Mobile Dental Unit, and theatre lists. To work with autonomy, and manage team members whilst fostering a courteous, positive, and professional manner always. To provide high standards of dental nursing care, and chairside assistance throughout the department.

Main duties of the job:

• Provide support to the Principal Dental Nurse and deputise in their absence.
• Manage a group of Dental Nurses within your designated area.
• Carry out duties of other senior nurses during any absence.
• Be able to train, update and assess trainee and qualified Dental Nurses at specified dental clinics.
• Ensure the provision of an efficient and effective service.
• Facilitate the development of Dental Nurses’ knowledge in all aspects of dentistry.
• Supervise a range of work activities appropriate to trainee and qualified Dental Nurses across sites and mobile dental units.
• Maintain effective communication with the public and staff on a full range of issues, some potentially complex.
• Ensure Continuing Professional Development is current, up to date and maintained.

The post holder will be required to work within the specialist clinical disciplines of Special Care Dental. To organise the efficient running of clinics in Special Care Dental. Provide chair side nursing assistance in Special Care Dental procedures. Assisting clinicians with specialised procedures, preparing and decontaminating instruments, handling instruments, providing patients with pre and post-operative care. To be accountable for own professional actions under General Dental Council guidelines, codes of practice. Ensure effective contribution to the delivery of the organisational and departmental objectives.

Experience:

• Must have valid GDC registration.
• Must have clinical experience, post registration experience.
• Experience of working within special care dentistry in either community or hospital setting.
• Must have experience/knowledge of leading on a service requirement.
• Experience of line management.
• Experience of domiciliary care.
• Experience of assisting with treatment with conscious sedation (IV and/or RA).

Clinical Duties:

• To undertake chair side duties as and when required for the smooth running of the Dental Services.
• To maintain and extend a good working up-to-date knowledge of dental procedures and to identify areas of personal development to ensure high standards are achieved.
• To assist the Dental surgeon with specialised programmes of care i.e. surgical and non-surgical interventions.
• To be responsible for preparing the clinic and the necessary instrumentation for specialised procedures without direct supervision.
• To undertake daily duties without direct supervision with Principal Dental Nurse available for advice as necessary.
• To anticipate events during patient’s treatments and prepare instruments and materials as appropriate and to ensure safe and effective clinical practice.

Quality and Clinical Governance:

• To contribute to the Clinical Governance activities and to comply with standards set for the Dental Services by Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust as part of its Quality Assurance programme.
• To develop and implement the Trusts Clinical Audit programme, Clinical Risk Strategy, Research and Development within the Trusts Clinical Governance Framework.
• To facilitate the Dental Nurse Audit Group meetings.
• To work with the Principal Dental Nurse on issues of quality standards, clinical governance, audit, and risk management.

Administrative Responsibilities:

• Preparation of daily clinics by providing the necessary instrumentation, materials, equipment, laboratory work, radiographs and scans to ensure that a seamless service is provided to the patient.
• To maintain records within clinics.
• Collating, filing and storage of patient study model boxes and patient photographs.
• Giving clinical advice regarding patient enquiries in person and by telephone.
• Write and develop local clinical practices and procedures for Special Care Dental.
• To participate in the development of information leaflets for the department.
• Co-ordinate packages of care for patients with departmental technical staff.
• To monitor and maintain stock levels within the department and liaise with the Principal Dental Nurse for authorisation.

Technical Responsibilities:

• To comply with local, trust and national policies and procedures.
• To disassemble and clean specialised dental units.
• To be able perform basic maintenance and simple fault finding on specialist equipment.

Procurement:

• Monitor stock across all clinics, ensuring allocated budgets are adhered to.
• First point of contact between stock suppliers and dental staff, obtaining costs for new materials and equipment.
• Sourcing unusual requests, providing costs and communicating this to the Principal Dental Nurse.
• Chasing creditor payments to ensure invoices are raised and paid in timely manner, troubleshooting when required.
• Raise stock orders to pay non-stock bills, for example laboratory fees and uniform.

Research and Development Responsibilities:

• Participates in departmental audit as necessary relevant to own work.
• Attending courses and conferences for the purposes of personal development.

Communication and Relationships:

• To be a positive role model to the nursing staff through appropriate conduct, attitude and behaviour.
• Offer support to the Senior Management Team.
• Be willing and able to take responsibility.
• Seek to, and take opportunity to, improve services.
• Be flexible in attitude and behaviour, to promote positive team interactions and facilitate the delivery of identified service objectives.
• Liaise with a wide range of specialties outside of the Trust including Medical and Dental practitioners other Trusts and Agencies, for patient treatments/appointments etc.
• Communication with patients and carers who may have barriers to understanding e.g. children, learning disabilities, chaperoned prisoners, dental phobic patients, patients in pain and distress and patients where English is not a first language.

Physical, Mental and Emotional Demands:

• The post holder can be subject to emotional and stressful situations in offering support to patients and their relatives.
• Reassuring and providing simple care instructions following a range of complex clinical procedures.
• Support anxious or upset patients or carers.
• Offering support to nervous or confused patients.
• Dealing with people who are verbally aggressive.
• Handling and passing very small components during specialist procedures.
• Preparation of dental materials and preparing of instrumentation.
• Working with speed, accuracy and dexterity.
• Multi-tasking during high levels of clinical activity.
• Changing priorities quickly and effectively to deal with urgent situations.

Education & Training:

• To demonstrate work of a Dental Nurse to Dental Nurse Students.
• Assisting in the training and development of new staff members.
• Facilitate regular training sessions for the bi-monthly staff training, as requested by the Principal Dental Nurse.

Extended Duties:

Extended duties to be performed, from those specified in “Special Care Dental Band 5 Dental Nurse Duties”. These duties may vary over time and will be allocated according to the needs of the service, as directed by the Principal Dental Nurse and/or Senior Management Team.

Person specification:

• Qualifications: Dental Nursing Level 3 Diploma/NVQ.
• Experience of working within Special Care Dentistry in either community or hospital setting.
• Must have valid GDC registration.
• Certificate in Dental Radiography.
• Certificate in Oral Health Promotion.
• Certificate in Special Care Dental Nursing.
• Experience working within Special Care dentistry.
• Experience of using R4 dental software.

Flexible Working:

As a major employer in the Black Country and West Birmingham region we are committed to supporting all employees to achieve a healthy work-life balance. We want the Black Country and West Birmingham region to be the best place to work and as such will consider all requests to work flexibly taking into account personal and individual circumstances alongside the needs of the service.