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An oral health educator has an important role within the dental setting to help prevent oral disease and promote good oral healthcare. Working as an educator means you have to hold a session, seeing patients on a one‐to‐one basis and promoting good oral health. These sessions could be held with a range of patients from children right the way through to senior patients. You may even be required to work within the community, meeting at schools and providing group sessions offering advice to children and their parents. As an oral health educator, you may want to expand your knowledge onto further areas such as:

 diet and nutrition

 impression taking

 fluoride application

 smoking cessation.

Working as an oral health educator, you are aiming to:

 Reduce the patient's risk of dental caries, periodontal disease, and oral cancer.

 Improve the patient's quality of life, including social and mental wellbeing.

 Improve the patient's education on how to care for their oral health.

To complete the aims outlined above, you may be asked to:

 Give advice to patients within a dental practice setting on referral from a dentist or orthodontist.

 Travel out into the community to visit schools, care homes, foster homes, etc.

 Provide group educational sessions to a certain target group.

 Provide oral health instructions while working under supervision of a dentist.

 Support clinical public health programmes/projects.

 Participate in the design, development, and maintenance of oral health education materials, equipment, and visual aids.

 Deliver in‐service training for healthcare/multiagency staff and to the staff in educational establishments.