Sarah Hughes

Dental Nurse

On a day-to-day basis I provide valued chairside assistance to our dentists and therapists across a range of dental services and I can be found working in urgent dental care and minor oral surgery through to routine NHS and private care. Although I’m based primarily in our Bodmin Dental Centre I am also able to work with our teams in different locations, which I also enjoy.

I absolutely love the interaction with our patients and the team spirit at Smile Together. Dental nursing here is so varied as we offer different services to what I was used to when working in general practice. It is so refreshing to get a genuine sense of job satisfaction, especially when working in urgent care as we really are getting people out of pain and keeping them out of A&E.

I just wish we could encourage more clinicians to come and work here, to be able to offer more of what we do as our services are so valuable for local people. I find that’s the biggest challenge in my role – wanting to be able to do more for those who need us most.

I’d often wondered about a dental nursing career and, when I was given my first opportunity in 1997, I found I loved it and I’ve never looked back! Prior to joining Smile Together I’d progressed into leadership and managerial roles but after 7 years I found that my responsibilities were becoming more administrative, and I was really missing patient engagement and being more ‘hands on’. That drew me back to dental nursing again and I love it!

Smile Together is such an inspiring company to work for. It feels like dentistry did when I first started out in dental nursing, with a focus on excellent patient care instead of ‘how much money can we get out of this person’. I love what we do in the community, such as Smiles at Sea and Health for Homeless, and that we can get involved in these and more. For example, through our partnership with Plant One I was able to help plant over 750 trees on a chilly day in January 2024! Being a certified B Corporation and an employee-owned CIC gives us a real voice in suggesting even more things that we can do locally, and this was one of the reasons I stood for election to our Shareholder Impact Board.  

To someone considering working for Smile Together, I would say join us as the more clinicians who do join, the more we can spread our care into our community through our outreach and other initiatives, but we can’t do it without you.

Outside of work I enjoy walking the beautiful Cornish coast path and a little running and cycling (sometimes fundraising for charity). I just love being outdoors and spending time with my family.