Top 5 Ways to Motivate and Encourage dental nurses (That actually work).

Are your dental staff feeling deflated and overworked? Is there an overall feeling of loss in motivation within your nursing staff?

Well look no further as this blog will break down the top five ways to motivate and encourage your dental nurses throughout your practice. From talking through incentives to promoting CPD’s within your work place, your  dental nurses will begin to feel a new sense of confidence in their career.

Before we begin, why is it important to motivate your dental nurses?

Nobody wants an employee with dwindling motivation – working at a slower pace, making mistakes, being a distraction for others and overall unfocused. Not only is this a waste of your time and resources, but can also encourage other employees to follow. What if there was a way to flip the narrative and create an uplifting and motivational work environment where nurses stay motivated in their professional career?

Creating an environment that encourages and maintains growth and productivity, sets career expectations and maintains professional standards will shine through not just your team’s attitude but also the work they do. To create a consistent and positive work environment, these five key tools must be used and incorporated within your workflow.

#1: Incentives

Offering incentives can be a vital part of encouraging the best out of your team to ensure career retention – linking efforts to rewards. In fact, recent studies have shown that 69% of employees who feel recognised work harder. Seeing these statistics change may encourage others to become part of the dental team.  So to ensure that here are some incentives to consider are:

• Pay rises
• Recognition – Personalised thank you messages or emails, shout outs during briefings.
• More flexible working hours – allowing staff to have a better work life balance.
• An early finish after a heavy shift dealing with clients or complications.
• Further funding toward long-term career development.

#2: Best courses for dental nurses for development and job satisfaction.

Offering Continuing Professional Development and career pathways to your employees not only enhances what dental services you can offer to your patients but also shows value towards your dental nurses within the company, their future and the emerging dental workforce overall. Not only this but when employees see an opportunity to develop new skills, they are more likely to invest in their job as they will be investing in themselves. Most healthcare employees are required to do a minimum of 50 hours of CPD resulting in a qualification every 5 years.

Offering them a series of workshops, online courses and mentorships will motivate them in and out of the workplace surrounding their future and enables stability within their career choice whether that is oral hygiene, dental anxiety or general dental practices. Websites that highlight modules and topics recommended for nurses are:

• Dental Nurse CPD, Courses & Inspiration
• Home | CPD for dental nurses – online CPD training including verifiable CPD training
• CPD for Dental Nurses | Easy to Complete | 500+ Hours Of Dental Nurse CPD | Dental nurse CPD Online |CPD Courses For Dental Nurses | Dental CPD | Dental CPD Courses |
• Dental Nurse Network Academy
• The new GDPR Regulations and is your Dental Practice compliant?
• Why Are Dental Nurses Often Leaving?

 #3: Mentorship development programs.

To expand on career progression even further, a mentorship program exploring their career plan might be just what your employer needs to boost their confidence and further their career in dental nursing or could be a great start for those who have just started dental nursing, shadowing a more senior employee may:

• Improve their own clinical performance by developing skills-  e.g. oral health education, dental hygiene, sedation nursing, dental radiography.
• More open to ask questions without the fear of being judged.
• Enables core trust between the employee and the senior staff.
• Further their motivation to study dental professions.
• Learn the requirements within their job role – GDC (general dental council), primary dental care, dental hygienist.
• Push their desire to work with people and patients.

#4: Set SMART goals for the best dental nurse training.

Setting SMART goals linking to their mentoring and career in dentistry is a great way of making them seem attainable to your team which improves their job satisfaction and timings. SMART goals is an anagram representing the steps in carrying out a task.

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Timebound

This is a great motivator for dental nurses with additional duties as it breaks tasks into manageable sections that you can split between your staff or they can complete step by step.. Allowing themselves to keep their progress in while also being able to give themself feedback which enables career motivation- this is especially important with student dental work.

#5: Work life balance increases wellbeing.

A work life balance has different meaning for everyone, whether it’s getting more sleep between shifts, keeping up to date with their social life, or shutting off your work phone when away from the office, it is essential that certain standard precautions are put in place. To back this, a study from 2023 has shown that 56.4% of medical staff feel completely used up.

The outcome of this could be a lack of motivation which is why it is essential to offer a more flexible work lifestyle – especially when your staff have been excelling in their scope of practice. On the contrary, if your team has been lacking, it may be best to give them some time away from the workplace as they can recharge and come back with a renewed focus and positive mindset. Encouraging this lifestyle may even encourage others to pursue a career in dental treatment or provide career motivation for this already pursuing this career.

#6: Bonus Tip

Providing your trainee with a sense of autonomy is an additional skill that builds trust between you and them knowing that you have confidence in their ability to  perform tasks and dental procedures independently.

It ensures your organisation has a more engaged and productive work day overall but also as individuals. Autonomy correlates with each of the topics linked above so it is something you can naturally instill on top of the already recommended 5 ways.

Turning motivation into long term success

As you can see, providing motivation for your team isn’t one simple answer, it is a plethora of solutions that you can trial to see what provides a more sustainable workflow for your team and ensure nurse retention. Dental nurse’s are the heart of any dental hospitals, keeping everything running smoothly while providing patient care and more.

It is important that we ensure that they are also taken care of and have time to look after themselves in and out of the work environment. That makes motivating your employees that much more important and with these 5 steps, we are positive you can.