Finding your spark

“So, you’re a dental nurse?”

The question is asked again but answered without me talking, “Oh, the one that holds the hoover!”. The patient laughs, and I still don’t answer. I want to explain that that dental nurses do so much more than that, but the conversation is over before it starts. Add to this the number of times I’ve been asked if I was training to be a dentist or why I didn’t finish university and ‘become a real dentist’.

But there is so much more to being a dental nurse than patients ever see. When I started dental nursing, I had just left school. Unfortunately, I was very ill with glandular fever when I was in the last year of school and this led to me missing most of the last year – leading to my exam results not being what I needed to go to university, and my dreams going nowhere. So, I saw an advert for a dental nurse job in which I could train on the go and get paid… It was vaguely medical related, so I reluctantly applied, (my mum also heavily encouraged me) so I thought I’d better listen to her!