Are you happy in your career?

University of Wolverhampton post-graduate student Paul Duffy is looking for 200 dental nurses to complete a study on job satisfaction as part of his MSc in Occupational Psychology research.

The idea for his proposal – Dental Nurses, Are They Satisfied With Their Careers? – was prompted by a very heated topic of debate nationally on the subject of the salary received by dental nurses (BDJ Team, 2016). He explains: ‘Unlike most nursing professions, there is no large scope of employment for dental nurses within organisations such as the NHS therefore, they are for the majority, employed by private practices – who can pay as little as National Minimum Wage to their staff, including dental nurses (Stirrup, 2016). In 1999, Gibson, Freeman and Ekins found that dental nurses were, broadly speaking, dissatisfied with their jobs. Economic dependence, one social label that they applied, is descriptive of how dependent the dental nurse is on the dentist's income – something that is just as relevant today.