Ergonomics in the dental station for the veterinary surgeon: Ergonomically good positions are very important when doing dentistry, since procedures are often long and numerous in awkward back and head positions. This lecture gives the basic guidelines to sit and work with ergonomically good manners to prevent headache, neck, shoulder and back pain to develop. It covers hand instrument grip, light, units, magnifiers, table and chairs, and give a number of solutions to go home and use immediately or to consider when buying new equipment.

Ergonomics in the dental station for the veterinary nurse: Ergonomics is extremely important in the dental station as the veterinary surgeon may frequently spend significant periods of time operating on individual patients, as well as undertaking multiple procedures per day. This can take its toll on the veterinary surgeon’s health and wellbeing due to the potentially awkward head and neck positions they often adopt throughout these procedures. This lecture provides the veterinary nurse with knowledge pertaining to ergonomics in the dental station to take back and apply in practice immediately, to minimise or eliminate the aforementioned negative impacts on their surgeons. We discuss optimal set up of the dental station considering access to the dental unit, X-ray generator, anaesthetic machine and surgical instrumentation, including the positioning of the table and operating light, and explore the concept of four-handed dentistry.