IV Sedation Full Course Dentists and Dental Nurses

To be able to carry out sedation independently, you need a theory course like ours, preferably with practical skills followed by a MINIMUM of 20 cases in your workplace with a mentor.  

You can then be signed off to say you are competent in IV Sedation. 

As the responsibility of the training falls on the mentor, the mentor can become accredited through STAC at the Royal College of Surgeons Faculty of Dental Surgery https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/dental-faculties/fds/publications-guidelines/standards-for-conscious-sedation-in-the-provision-of-dental-care-and-accreditation/faq/

The question here is about the “second responsible person” doing the dentistry under sedation. 

To treat a dental patient under sedation, the bare minimum personnel are a fully sedation trained dentist and a fully sedation trained nurse. We believe it’s preferable to have three people, one who is solely focussed on sedation, but that’s not in the standards. It is preferable for the sedation nurse to be solely focussed on the sedation and not be involved in the dentist whilst they are being mentored. 

So a nurse who hasn’t completed their 20 cases mentored can’t be working in that pair. 

Mentoring wise, the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the mentor and to ensure they have the requisite experience it is important to be IACSD approved as a mentor. 

There are some ways around this problem. 

1. Use a dedicated sedationist – they can mentor the nurse and a second appropriate person is not required 
2. Use a sedation qualified nurse to assist with the dental procedure and the mentored nurse can focus on the sedation under the supervision of the dentist who is mentoring. 

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So the standards talk about doing sedation regularly in order to keep up skills. By not doing it regularly the question is should you be doing it at all?

We tend to recommend:

1. you’ve completed sedation theory training and you have 18 months to complete your 20 cases
2. If cases haven’t been completed then a refresher course may be sensible before being mentored again
3. If you aren’t particularly experienced in sedation then a full course + minimum of 20 cases mentored would be sensible. 

At the end of the day, you need to following things to carry out IV Sedation as a dentist or nurse:

Core theory course approx 14 hours 

Minimum of 20 mentored cases within 18 months 

Yearly Immediate Life Support Training

Minimum 12 hours sedation CPD every 5 year cycle

Regularly treat patients under sedation approx one case a month minimum. 

To carry on with sedation:

You need to be doing it regularly enough to justify keep doing it. There are no hard and fast rules but we recommend at least once a month.

You need to keep a log of your cases

You need minimum of 12 hours vCPD in Sedation every 5 year cycle

You need Immediate Life Support (ILS) training, renewable every year, of Advanced Life Support (ALS) training every 4 years.

This is a large subject, what do the CQC require of sedationists. We have put together a module about this on this website called “Using UKSedation” which gives some useful info