Sophie, you’re currently studying Oral Health Science at the University of Essex and are now in your second year. You finished your first year with an amazing result and earned yourself a place on the Dean’s list of academic excellence. Congratulations! You were a head dental nurse in a practice in London for seven years before applying for dental hygiene, so this interview will be asking some questions to inspire those who are thinking about a career as a dental hygienist – the aim is to get them thinking about what sorts of things they may need to do to get to that point. We want to know all about what made you choose this career and how you started on the path towards it.

November is approaching fast, and this is the month to help raise awareness of oral cancer. 

Oral cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the world, and approximately 7,800 people are diagnosed with it in the UK each year. The number of people being diagnosed with oral cancer has grown by around a third in the last decade, so making people aware of it is more important than ever before. As health care professionals, it’s important that we ensure our patients know the risks and understand that a few lifestyle changes can reduce their chances of developing this disease.

The arrival of our new walking shoes gave us a burst of excitement when it came to planning our first training walk. Our plan was to complete a local ten-mile circuit we had discovered, so it was with a heavy heart that I opened the curtains on Saturday morning to see a very grey sky and more rain than we have seen in the last few months put together!

You have recently qualified as an orthodontic therapist – big congratulations. To inspire and encourage dental nurses who are interested in training to become orthodontic therapists or who are looking into different areas of career progression, we would love to know more about you, your career development and the courses and training you have completed to help you get where you are today.

To start off, I want to relay a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: ‘Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty’.