Recently, as the practice has been expanding quickly, we realised that we needed to appoint further hygienist support.

The hygienist service at our practice is split mainly between support of Ian, our Specialist in Periodontics and implant maintainence, which also includes pre-operative preparation of implant patients.

As with all positions in the practice, it is crucially important that our hygienist has an exceptional ability to communicate with patients. We need our hygienist to be able to work under these circumstances, making complex clinical decisions about patients’ treatment whilst providing the highest level of customer service and patient care.

Communication and explanation to patients of their treatment requirements is essential whilst working under the prescription of a dentist.

With this in mind, we took on the task of appointing a new hygienist (our current hygienist is brilliant).

On discussion with Charlotte, our practice manager, we decided to set up a process to give us the best opportunity of appointing the best individual. Firstly this involved placing an advert that was different to the adverts you would usually see for a hygienist. It explained the benefits of working at our practice and was able to attract a fantastic field of applicants. Following this we shortlisted the process down to 5 for an initial interview. The most important part of the interview process was that we included our current hygienist. She is fantastic within the practice and what we want is someone who can work in the same way, giving the same level of care that she does. We felt it would be essential for her to be heavily involved in the shortlisting and interviews processes. Once the interviews were over we were able to select the 2 best candidates that suited our practice and these candidates have now been put forward to attend ‘trial days’.  This will involve the candidates seeing patients at the practice, under the supervision of our hygienist Karen and Hayley our senior nurse. The main purpose of this process is to ensure that the hygienists have outstanding communication skills.

We believe we can teach anyone to provide a clinical skill in the practice to a good standard but we cannot teach anyone communication.

I am delighted to say that the two hygienists who have been put forward for the trial days seem to be fantastic and it will be a very difficult choice.

I would also say that throughout this process I have been massively impressed and uplifted by the professional standards of hygienists and their commitment to their work.

It seems to me that they put a lot of my dentist colleagues to shame.

We are looking forward to working with our new hygienist at the practice and we hope that this selection process will mean we will have a new team member for a very long time to come.