The final fit part 2 – results of research into educational needs of dental nurses

This is the second part of the final article in our series about dental nurse education and training. During October 2014, 600 readers of Dental Nursing participated in an anonymised online survey into the training and educational needs of dental nurses in the UK. Due to the huge amount of information collected, the first paper by Stuart (2014) looked at the results around you, your existing qualifications and employment.

Although we could not say that the results from the survey were truly representative of the dental nurse population as a whole, they did indicate that a significant proportion of dental nurses have gained further qualifications, with 40.3% (n=171) holding a postregistration qualification in radiography; 39.6% (n=168) hold a postregistration qualification in oral health education (OHE) and 29.4% (n=123) hold a postregistration qualification in dental sedation (please note, respondents could have gained more than one of these qualifications). More importantly, from an educationalist point of view, 46% (n=254) of the respondents were planning to gain further qualifications. The most desired qualification was a postregistration qualification (46.7%; n=141) This demonstrates the potential demand from the dental nurse profession.