Dental Nurse

Our Vision is to provide the best mental health, learning disability, autism, community, and physical health services for the populations we serve.

As an integrated Trust, Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT) delivers a comprehensive range of services, including:

• Primary and secondary mental health care for children and adults, including specialist inpatient child and adolescent mental health provision, perinatal mental health, and forensic services with low and medium secure care.
• Specialist mental health inpatient care for individuals with learning disabilities, alongside specialist community support for children and adults with learning disabilities and autism, including intensive support.
• Extensive community physical health and well-being services for children and adults, covering prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and long-term condition management.

The Trust was first established in 2002 and employs approximately 7,500 staff who provide care from more than 400 sites. The organisation offers opportunities for medics, mental health, general nurses, children’s nurses, allied health professionals, psychology, administration and clerical staff, apprentices and volunteers, as well as those specialising in learning disabilities and community physical health services.

For more information visit our website via Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS FT.

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Qualified, and registered Dental Nurse to join our team at Ashton Health Centre, Department of special care dentistry, Preston within the Lancashire and South Cumbria Dental Service.

We are seeking an enthusiastic, motivated individual, with excellent communication skills to assist in the delivery of Special care dental services. The post requires the individual to work 22.5 hours per week, over 3 days. You must be a qualified dental nurse, and you will have a good standard of education and the ability to work well within a team. Post qualifications are desirable but not essential.

You will mainly work at your base clinic; however, you may also be required to work at our other clinics, covering sickness and annual leave. You will have opportunity to study for post registration qualifications including sedation and will have access to plentiful CPD and clinical supervision.

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• Communication daily with Lancashire & South Cumbria foundation trust Dental Service staff, service users, service users parents and carers and Health Professionals.
• To provide oral health information and advice to service users, parents and carers
• Assisting the Clinician throughout treatment of the service user, anticipating the needs of both clinician and service user
• Act as chaperone
• To care and supervise service users undergoing general anaesthesia, in collaboration with the anaesthetic staff at the Surgical Day Case Unit, Burnley General Hospital / Royal Blackburn Hospital and to give pre and post-operative advice.
• To assess the needs of individual patients offering appropriate advice and to prioritise dental emergencies using triage type questioning.
• To provide pre and post-operative advice to patients, parents and carers.
• To provide oral health information and advice to patients, parents and carers.

Working for our organisation

LSCFT values diversity and inclusion, recognising that talent from varied backgrounds creates a flexible, creative, and effective workforce. We actively challenge discrimination and welcome applications from all, regardless of age, disability (including those with experience of accessing or caring for someone who has accessed mental health or learning disability services), ethnicity, gender, religion, belief, or sexual orientation.

Our aim is to reflect the communities we serve, so we particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups. If you’d like to discuss your application, please ask.

We also welcome individuals with lived experience relevant to the role or service area, as your insight brings authenticity to our services.

LSCFT support flexible working, we believe that a positive work/life balance benefits NHS employees through improved health and wellbeing. We would consider working patterns such as term time, part time, compressed hours and flexi-time.

The wellbeing of our people is at the heart of everything we do. We offer a wide range of resources, tools and support to help you thrive both in and out of work.

Explore our full wellbeing offer here: Keeping our workforce well

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see attached the job description and person specification for more information about this role.

You are advised to consider applying for LSCFT vacancies as soon as possible as in some instances vacancies are closed as soon as a sufficient number of applications have been received. If you are not invited to interview within four weeks of the closing date then please assume that on this occasion you have been unsuccessful, as it is not possible to contact all unsuccessful candidates.

Please note that further communication from LSCFT will normally be to the email address given on the application form. You should also ensure that email addresses and telephone numbers are provided for your referees, to enable LSCFT to contact them.

Please ensure that you read the person specification as your application will be measured against this document.

If you use AI to assist with your application, you must declare this. Undeclared use may result in withdrawal. Please ensure your application reflects your own skills and experiences. While AI tools can assist, they may produce generic or inaccurate content. We encourage you to provide personal examples that demonstrate how you meet the essential criteria.

For all posts which require a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check please be aware of the Disclosure and Barring Service Code of Practice, a copy of which is available by logging on to the DBS website. If the post is subject to DBS disclosure, a charge will be made to the successful candidate(s).