24/7 Triage Dental Nurse

Job overview

The Dental Nurse will provide telephone dental advice during the operational hours of the service to patients with dental symptoms. As well as working during normal practice hours, this role includes working outside of normal practice hours including evenings, weekends and bank holidays.

The ability to speak Welsh is desirable for this post; English and/or Welsh speakers are equally welcome to apply.

Main duties of the job

• Respond to dental calls from Cardiff and Vale residents; ensuring safe and effective outcomes are achieved.
• Carry out the appropriate action necessary to ensure that calls are dealt with in line with Cardiff and Vale University Health Board policies and procedures.
• Assess patients presenting symptoms and provide appropriate advice on dental outcomes, referring callers to appropriate services within Wales when necessary.
• Provide information and advice on dental conditions including pre and post-operative advice and oral health promotion messages.
• Participate in initial and ongoing training to continually update and improve skills relevant to the role of a Dental Nurse /Advisor.
• Undertake specific tasks under the supervision of the Dental Nurse Manager as required in line with standards and working guidelines.
• Maintain own professional development attending all statutory/mandatory training and any role relevant training/education sessions pertinent to role.
• Ensure continued professional registration status with GDC.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Communication and Relationship Skills

• Provide and receive complex information where they may be barriers to understanding
• Operate in an environment where excellent communication skills are essential.  These will include dealing with multidisciplinary professionals and patients, listening, empathising, reassuring and taking decisive action
• Communicate with multidisciplinary staff at all levels within the organisation
• Communicate effectively with challenging or vulnerable patients e.g. those with learning difficulties, mental health problems and nervous patients
• Explain dental procedures and charges to patients
• Participate in investigation of incidents, complaints or accidents as required

Analytical & Judgmental skills

• Analysis of patients and assess if requiring immediate urgent care and refer via the appropriate routes for medical/dental emergencies
• Analysis and judgement of situations where patients may have exceeded recommended doses of pain relief providing advice/referral as appropriate

• Ensure queries from healthcare professionals are dealt with appropriately and within own scope of practice

Planning & Organisation skills

• Planning and adapting when forced to do so as a result of revised priorities or contingency measures
• Participate in staff meetings and clinical supervision

Patient/Client care responsibilities

• Ensure that all patients calls are being processed in line with targets set by the Welsh Assembly Government
• Provides pre and post-operative advice and instruction for attending emergency dental service
• Provides self-care advice for patients who do not require urgent dental care in line with scope of practice
• Provides advice on over the counter pain relief to patients in line with professional scope of practice

Policy & service development

• Follow UHB’s policies and procedures
• Implements policies in own area of work and contributes to policy development
• Deal with complaints in accordance with UHB Policy and NHS guidance on the handling of complaints

Human Resources

• Demonstrates own role to less experienced staff
• Participate in clinical supervision

Financial & Physical Resources

• Safe use of IT equipment

Information resources

• Responsible for maintaining and updating patient records on the Adastra system
• Implement and ensure adherence across the Hub to the UHB Records Management Policy and Procedures including Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Caldicott principles
• Provide access to necessary patient information for audit or report purposes
• Ensure accurate patient details, medical history and dental history are recorded using correct spelling and terminology to ensure the correct maintenance of the out of hour’s database
• Record personally generated information.

Research & Development

• Participates in collecting data for research/audit purpose

You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click “Apply now” to view in Trac.