General practice
Two words that cover about six completely different jobs
Almost everybody in dentistry starts in general practice, and almost nobody realises how much it varies until they work somewhere else. Deal through a few and see how little the label tells you.
Practice 1 of 5
The three-chair family practice
One dentist, one hygienist, one assistant, and a receptionist who has been there eleven years. Patients are families the practice has treated across two generations.
What the day is like
Unhurried, personal, and entirely dependent on everybody turning up. One absence and the day is visibly wrong.
Who tends to like it
People who want to know their patients and do not want to be a name on a rota.
A type of practice, not a real one. Nothing here describes any particular office, and the meters are a rough shape rather than a measurement.
Four things that change everything, and none of them are on the sign outside
The software
Whether you are productive by nine or asking where the recall list lives is decided entirely by what they run and whether you have run it before.
How much is delegated to you
The same job title carries very different responsibilities from one practice to the next, and neither version is wrong. It is worth knowing which one you are walking into.
What gets referred out
One practice sends every molar endo away. Another does its own surgical extractions. That single decision changes what your week looks like more than anything on the door.
Whether the schedule is honest
Some practices book what a day can actually hold. Others book what they wish it could. You find this out at about eleven in the morning.
Which is exactly why temping suits this setting
In a specialty you already know whether the work is for you. In general practice the question is never the work. It is the place.
Building a schedule that works- 01
You get to try before you decide
A day is an interview that runs in both directions and costs you nothing. Most people cannot describe the practice they want until they have worked in three that were not it.
- 02
Your range grows faster than it would anywhere else
Five practices in a month teaches you more about being useful in an unfamiliar operatory than a year in a familiar one, and that adaptability is the thing offices are really paying for.
- 03
The rate does not depend on your negotiating
Set by category and city and shown before you claim. Nobody is quoted less because they did not push, and nobody is quoted more because the office is desperate.
Who we place in general practice
Most of the platform, most of the time
- Registered dental hygienist
- The most requested role on the platform, and the one where a single absence visibly costs an office a day.
- Dental assistant and chairside
- Anything from recall support to four-handed restorative, depending entirely on what that practice does in-house.
- Front office and reception
- Scheduling, recall, claims and payments. The practice management software you know is the single most useful thing on your profile.
- Dentists
- Locum cover and permanent associate work. Placed through our permanent side rather than as ordinary temp shifts.
Start with one day somewhere new
Set up your profile, add the software you know, and pick the days you are free. You are not committing to anything by looking at what is available near you.