Celebrating a centenary

King’s College Hospital Dental School opened in 1923. It is reported that dental nurses were trained at the hospital from the late 1930s. The Dental School was first established to serve the poor and disadvantaged and went on to provide training. The Dental Hospital has since grown steadily in size and training has evolved to meet the requirements of the profession and the needs of patients it serves.Trainee dental nurses are still trained today, both internally and externally.

Currently there are 197 dental nurses employed, and the dental nurses hold a variety of roles and work across the following sites; Dental Hospital at Denmark Hill, The Gillies Unit at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup and in the Community Dental clinics.Across all three sites the year leading up to March 2020 150,786 patient appointments were delivered by the incredible team. During the pandemic all dental nurses were re-deployed in to Covid-19 response roles, this included working in Critical Care, general wards, Covid-19 swabbing clinics, the vaccination clinics and other roles of support wherever they were needed. Now thankfully, all dental nurses have returned to their pre-pandemic roles and clinical activity is gradually returning to 2019 levels.