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Applying to University, UCAS Application

Writing your personal statement for Dental Hygiene and Therapy

1 December 2024
Sophie Robinson

Sophie Robinson

Hi everyone! Today I’m going into my experience and tips for writing your personal statement for Dental Hygiene and Therapy. When writing my personal statement, I found that there wasn’t much information out there for Dental Hygiene and Therapy so I primarily used examples of personal statements from BDS as the scopes are similar and skills fairly transferable.

 

What I did when preparing my personal statement + tips:

  • I researched the scope of practice – there are multiple roles in the dental team including an orthodontic therapist so make sure you’re applying to the right thing for you! Info on the scope of practice on all dental professionals can be found on the GDC website linked below.
  • I added why I wanted to do Dental Therapy and why I thought the role was important.
  • You only have a limited word count (check the amount via UCAS as this could change depending on your year of application) so make sure you’re concise so you can fit in all points you want to speak about.
  • Showcase your relevant skills, I always backed this up with an example. So, when speaking about my experiences and hobbies I always tried to link the skills that would be transferable to the Dental Professions. For example, I enjoy special effects makeup which involves fine motor skills and attention to detail. These are both essential when cutting a cavity and creating the morphology (shape) of the tooth.
  • In the Dental Profession you’re constantly learning and taking courses to keep up to date, so I spoke about what I had learnt from my experiences to show I’m eager to learn and develop my skills. For example, I took the ‘Discover Dentistry’ course run by The University of Sheffield. Not only did it show I’m dedicated to the profession, but it was really interesting to gain an insight into the history of dentistry, different roles of the team and basic dental terminology. Similarly, if you have been a dental nurse before or shadowed a dental team in a local dental practice, you could speak on what you’ve learnt from that. I did work experience in a local practice and it helped give me an idea of the day to day life of a dental professional. In turn this helped me decide whether dentistry would be for me.
  • Similarly to the point above, to show your dedication to learning you could speak about the subjects you have chosen for A-levels/BTEC – I particularly enjoyed the anatomy side of biology so I included this as learning anatomy is very important when identifying what’s normal and what’s not in a patient.
  • To show perseverance I spoke about when I volunteered at a Beavers group. I’m fairly shy so I found that I struggled with communication, however after pushing myself to complete this role I improved my communication skills with both children and adults. This shows I can be self-critical in order to improve and also demonstrates the key skill of communication needed for dentistry. I advise looking into the NHS principles and GDC core values to see the skills and characteristics needed of a dental professional.
  • I also spoke about my aspirations to progress in the career – for example you can go into doing courses in inhalation, sedation, teaching or running a practice.
  • Dental Schools will use the personal statement differently. How they use the personal statement is summarised annually on the Dental Schools Council website (link below).  The Dental Schools Council have lots of useful information about applying on their website.
  • Further information about writing personal statements is also available via Cardiff University (link below).
  • Details about how Cardiff use the personal statement for their Dental School programmes is available in the “Frequently Asked Questions” document (link below).

 

This isn’t a complete checklist of what you should include but this should give you a good idea of some possible points you could speak about. Good luck!

 

Useful links-