Ive been offered the Head Nurse role

Hi there

In my role as senior in hospital my role is ordering stock and making sure stock is rotated regularly,
Doing the weekly rota
Organising maintenance of equipment and chairs
Delegating jobs to the team of dental nurses
Attending meetings with the principal and consultants
Attend health and safety meetings and make sure everyone complies with the Nhs policies.

It does mean I've to be quite assertive as working with so many people there's a mix of characters and I've to be able to deal with issues as they come.
As for salary it does vary depending where you work in hospital all seniors are on one salary band and dental nurses are on another so practice nurses are paid different I think.
It does need you to be highly organised and do a fair amount of juggling but a very worth while position especially training up the new dental nurses or trainees.

Our head nurse orders all the stock, does the staff rota, she knows the building/practice like the back of her hand, she works with one of the partners full time (the more difficult one!)
She sets a really good example to the team, she never moans or complains about anything and is always very positive.
I'm sure she does a lot more than I don't know about!
The one thing I would say is that she is far too nice and doesn't do confrontation. Sometime I think it would be necessary to pull people up on certain things (e.g., When it's a known fact someone doesn't clean down properly and is always out the door dead on 5.30)!

As for the salary - I have no idea!

Here are some of the jobs I do as Head nurse,

-Manage the day to day running of the surgeries regarding nursing jobs
-Help the practice manager with the nurses' appraisals
-Act as a point of contact between the nursing staff and dentists/management
-Mediate if there are issues
-Lead a nurse meeting periodically and report back to practice manager or bring up issues in the practice meetings
-Decontamination lead for the practice (get a copy of HTM 01-05 and learn it!)
-Write and update decontamination policies
-Oversee testing, validation and maintenance of decontamination equipment
-In house training for staff
-New nursing staff inductions and training
-EDI schedule queries and any other
-Chasing up patients who a mid-treatment and have not returned
-Stock control and ordering
-Various audits

As head nurse you really have to know your stuff regarding HTM 01-05 and you must work to the absolute highest standards and set a good example to the nurses you manage.
Also looking at how you can improve practice procedures, i.e I have created daily cleaning schedules for the nurses to fill in at the end of each day so when the CQC appear there is documented evidence that decontamination is taking place.

I've found being head nurse really rewarding and I've already made a big impact on my practice. There is loads more I want to do and I'm lucky because my employer is very supportive and open to my suggestions.


Good luck

Hi I'm looking for a bit of help and advice, Ive just been offered the role of Head Nurse at my practice (they have never had one before). My boss has suggested that over the weekend I come up with a job description of what I think a Head Nurse should do and then on Monday I can compare it to his list!?! He also asked me to come up with an hourly rate for Head Nurse again to be discussed on Monday. has anyone able to help or advice?

Thanks x