Anna Middleton

My name is Anna Middleton, I live in London and I am a dually qualified dental hygienist and dental therapist.

I spend most of my time at work looking after my patients and that can be anything from their first visit to the dental practice or my long-standing regular patients.

The bulk of my work is gum disease and dental decay prevention. So I provide professional teeth cleaning services for my patients, but I'm also able to carry out dental examinations, take radiographs when needed, as well as provide fillings for both children and adults.

So no two days are the same.

A typical clinic day would see me arriving at work. This is my time to set up for the day. I like to go through my patients' notes, find out what I've got coming in, what do I need to be prepared for, do I have any new patients, am I seeing any patients that are coming in for treatment that we need to make sure we're set up for.

If I've, say for example, completed tooth whitening for a patient, have their trays come back from the lab, it's just preparing for the day really.

Then my typical appointments with my patients if they're having cleaning is anywhere between sort of 45 minutes and one hour. So I say maybe four or five before lunch and then we have another sort of four or five at the end of the day. And then that's it. And then I'm off to home.

And if I'm not in clinic, I am very fortunate that I have extra activities outside of the surgery. I regularly teach other dental clinicians how to perform the cleaning that I do.

I also regularly speak at dental events and showcases. I enjoy writing for both industry and consumer press. And it's led me to have some wonderful opportunities working with brands within the industry to create new products, increase public awareness.

You know, there's a whole host of things out there just outside of actually using my hands and my clinical skills.

So I work in what we would call a multi-disciplinary practice, which means there's a whole team of other dental professionals there. One of my practices has lots of dental specialists. So we have an endodontist, a periodontist, we've got an implantologist, and I like to work very closely with them.

I also would be absolutely nothing without my dental nurse. And that's actually how I started my journey and career path. I started as a dental nurse and I'll be truthful. I actually didn't know what a dental hygienist was until I started working with one and she became my inspiration and what led me to then pursue a career in dental hygiene.

We have a whole team, we have a front of house. We've got a practice manager. I have my principal dentist and we all have our specialities and type of work that we like.

So it's really nice to work in a team environment where we know who we can refer to, especially when something falls outside of your scope of practice, knowing that I have other clinicians there that can help me is really, really important, not only to myself as a clinician, but also for the patient's journey.

I mean, I work in dentistry, so the best part of my job is seeing my patients smile.

I have a passion for changing the way that oral healthcare is delivered to the public and improving access to dental services. And for a long time, lots of people coming to the dentist, you know, or seeing the hygienist was quite a daunting or maybe an unpleasant experience.

So getting to deliver treatment in a way that's comfortable and enjoyable really means that it helps patients feel good about themselves, their oral health, but also maintaining that health for many years to come.

The hardest part of my job would be the sort of repetitive strain that you can feel on your back and your neck. So looking after your posture is very, very important.

I make sure that I wear special glasses called loupes that keep my head and neck upright. I make sure I go to Pilates, I see a physio. But the hardest part is definitely the sort of the strain I think you feel on your body.

Also, you know, we're working with people, so managing patient expectations and having a good rapport with them is also really important. It can be long, hard hours sometimes, you can be busy, it can be a bit stressful.

So I think making sure you're in an environment where you feel really supported with a great team around you is so important in this job.

So actually my first career was as a sound engineer and I did music tech at college and then I decided to career change.

So it just goes to show it doesn't matter what you first decide to do. You might find yourself doing something else later.

I decided I really wanted to study again and I wanted a job that worked in a way that was an apprenticeship.

So that's how I became a dental nurse. And then when I started working with the hygienist, she became my inspiration.

So I got my head down, did what I needed to do to apply for university. And that's it. I went off to become a dental hygienist. That was my first time at university. And I did a two year dental course.

And then I qualified in 2015 but then in 2020 I decided to go back to university to become a dental therapist so that was the part of the course that then would allow me to do exams and fillings and that was a one-year top-up course that I completed and completed that in 2021.

But along the way, I have completed many one-day courses. I've also completed two postgraduate diplomas.

Unfortunately, we're going to be students for life. The learning never stops and ends, particularly with new information, emerging technologies, but also our own interests will change over time.

So it's really exciting and it's healthy and important to carry on adding strings to your bow.

So I was never a superstar at school. I did well, and my advice is always do well enough in your core subjects so you've got them to fall back on.

So I didn't go to university until I was 26, which meant I was relying on school grades from 10 years prior to help me get where I wanted to be.

However, along the journey, not only did I have my sort of school grades, before I applied for university, I tried to do as many extra dentally related courses that I possibly could to help strengthen my application. So I completed my radiography training as a dental nurse to help with my application and strengthen my grades.

Obviously with this sort of field, science is important. You know, biology is the one they sort of look out for and they ask for. But yeah, I think I just put every little piece of education and knowledge that I had together to show that I was determined and more than able of learning at a higher level.

There's so many highlights in my career that I'm extremely proud of.

I think probably one of my first big career highlights was becoming a key opinion leader for the oral healthcare brand, Philips. I was only sort of two, three years out of university and they sort of saw what I was doing and the work that I was putting out there. And they've asked me to be a key opinion leader, which I'm still to this day working with them.

So some of those, you know, real moments of having your work acknowledged outside of the surgery and your patients by people who really see something and believe in you is a really lovely moment and something I'm proud of, along with many other wonderful moments that are similar.

I think the advice I wish I had when I was younger was probably just to not be afraid to ask questions.

There's no such thing as, you know, a silly question. We're here to learn. And I think if you don't understand something and you need it explained in a different way, to be able to, I guess in a way, feel vulnerable enough to lean into that, to get the help that you need, so you're then not frustrated and you feel that you're actually getting ahead with things.