Making sure you’re the perfect fit

The lead dental nurse (LDN) role is here to stay. The new key lines of enquiry, introduced by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in April 2018, now place greater emphasis on the development of sustainable services. This means the responsibility for meeting required standards doesn’t depend upon one key person. Rather, responsibilities are allocated throughout a network of team leads, with each lead having deputies in place, able to ensure the practice’s systems run correctly in the absence of the appointed lead.

It is a privilege to be appointed as a lead dental nurse. It means that your employer has faith in your abilities and feels you have something to offer to your colleagues in the lead dental nurse role. When accepting this position, it’s essential that employer and employee are clear about the role and what each expects from the other. If the employer is not clear about what is expected from the post holder, how can the post holder know how much work is involved – and whether they can do justice to the role – without some ringfenced time being allocated to LDN duties? The care standards that the LDN might expect to oversee are not optional ‘nice to haves’, they are regulatory standards or, in some cases, set in law. When appointing a LDN, the senior management need to allocate the time, resources and authority to fulfil the role effectively.