Dental Hygiene and Therapy - How it started and how it's going
Kayley graduated from Portsmouth Dental Academy with a degree in Dental Hygiene and Dental Therapy in 2010. Since then, she has worked in private practices and in Poole Hospitals Maxillo-Facial department treating head and neck trauma and oncology patients as a dental hygienist. Kayley set up Dorset Dental Clinic with her dental implant dentist in October 2018, obtaining planning permission and change of use and overseeing all building work and interior design to marketing and branding of the practice. Setting up with the CQC as the registered manager and putting systems in place to run the practice as Kayley and her husband Philip had always wanted to. The practice won Best New Practice in the South at the Private Dentistry Awards. Kayley won Best Dental Hygienist 2020 and The Dental Awards. The team and laboratory and practice have won and been highly commended in many further awards since opening. Most proudly the practice won a non-dentistry award for Best Enterprise 2020. Kayley has created a Masterclass in Dental Implants for Hygienists and Dental Therapists, backed by leading dental brands such as Philips, EMS, and Implant companies such as Straumann and is the only hands-on course of its kind for dental therapists and hygienists in the UK. Kayley is committed to the empowerment and championing of Dental Hygienists and Therapists, and how they can have a fulfilling career.
I had always wanted to work in dentistry.
I loved the clinical setting, that you got to meet new people all day long and build a rapport with patients, who you then look after long term. I organised a work placement in a dental practice and shadowed other healthcare professionals in other departments like midwifery, optometry, ENT department, just to check if dentistry was definitely for me! I paid to take a day course at Bristol University in their Dental Hygiene department, as you got to try out treatment on phantom heads like hand scaling and ultrasonic scaling and although I was just about 18 at the time and the course there only accepted students from 21 years of age, you really got a feel for whether your dexterity was going to be up to scratch and if you'd enjoy the work. I checked job vacancies to see what type of jobs were available and there was plenty on offer locally at good rates of pay and I thought at least I would come out of University and be able to find a job easily as well as having the hands-on job in healthcare I enjoyed. I applied to Portsmouth Dental Academy as my only choice as at the time, in 2006 it was the only place offering a BSc (Hons) in hygiene and therapy. Potentially a diploma could be limiting in the future.
Fast forward 10 years and I am still really enjoying my career. The downside of dental hygiene and therapy is that UK dentistry hasn't utilised Dental Therapists the same way other countries have. You'll still see plenty of job vacancies for dental hygienists, but it's still very limited for dental therapy work. This is mainly because hygiene and periodontal maintenance within a practice is a very busy department, and typically in the UK all the restorative work still goes to a dentist. Sometimes there isn't enough work within a practice for dentists to refer any work other than hygiene treatments. This has led to some therapists deskilling. There are still opportunities after graduating to work in a variety of settings, privately, in hospital or community settings, being self-employed and starting your own business, working for dental companies, you could study further, do a masters, go into lecturing, or go into research. Working part time is the norm across a few different practices, so you can still have full-time hours, which can make for a very interesting week.
Dentistry is ever evolving, the dental professionals you meet along your career are just as enthusiastic and there's a real positive morale on social media between dental professionals helping one another, giving tips and advice on clinical skills, communication, instrument and materials and marketing. If you can get the right mix of clinical work and a great team to work alongside, there isn’t a dull moment. Time keeping is key and thinking on your feet. Educating and motivating patients as well as being a creative, it is quite an art to create beautiful teeth out of composite, restore a patient’s function and bite and see patient’s oral health improve, even saving patients from losing teeth unnecessarily, picking up on signs of abnormal lesions to getting that anxious patient through treatment and to a stage where they have overcome their fear of dentistry is all very rewarding. The Covid-19 pandemic has absolutely made dentistry harder, in the enhanced PPE we are in all day it’s tiring, and the need to restructure treatment times around fallow time for the end of the appointment, along with the usual pressures on ensuring paperwork is up to date, medical history, clinical notes, treatment planning and options and consent are all concurrent.
I have seen some major milestones within the dental hygiene and therapy profession since graduating, such as direct access and patient group directives. Having a dental nurse chair side is not mandatory, but fortunately more commonplace now. These have gone someway to making our practicing lives a little easier. There is a little way to go to raising the public’s awareness of dental hygienists, but as it is commonplace to have at least one hygienist within a practice, mainly it is just the dental therapists profile whose needs to be raised now. It would be beneficial to the NHS if Dental Therapists could be utilised more effectively, but as we cannot have our own performer number it makes it very difficult for dentists with an NHS performer number and NHS contract to refer that work to a therapist and pay them appropriately for it. You can do a vocational training scheme straight after graduating to help get the support and more therapy work but it may not necessarily be where you’d want to live. I was lucky enough to be able to start my own dental practice alongside my husband, and this has given everyone in our team the opportunity to work to their full scope of practice, and after investing heavily in the latest technology and advances in digital dentistry has meant that our team aren’t held back by their job roles but have a fulfilling and interesting career and are respected in doing so. You can be pigeonholed by some practices and feel really limited by it.
So, it’s great to see people thrive in their careers as dentists, hygienists, dental therapists and dental nurses.
You can also have a life and raise a family around a career in dental hygiene and therapy. Typically, being part time, it can work very well, and most practices are very accommodating. I have 2 very small children, a Dental Implant Clinic with Dental Laboratory. I go on courses, I get to see my own patients for a range of treatments as a Hygienist and Dental Therapist as well as work with my other Dental Hygienist and Therapist team, and I mentor and am a course provider. It’s a very busy week but can still fit it all in!
There’s always more to learn in dentistry, no matter how long you have been practising for, and I think that is, no matter what your current remit is within the practice you are working in, the driving force to a happy career. Always trying to improve, do the best for your patients, taking pride in your work and learning new skills and new techniques. It’s definitely an interesting time to be in dentistry.