What type of cover does dental nurse indemnity insurance offer?
This type of insurance will offer dental nurses indemnity protection against medical malpractice and also against negligence during treatments or in relation to the advice given to a patient. It will also include public liability insurance, protecting you from claims made by members of the public for injury or damage to personal property.
Your insurer may be able to add additional useful cover, such as that for aesthetic treatments offered in your workplace, defamation, breach of confidence, product liability, loss of documents and Good Samaritan acts.
What level of cover will I need as a dental nurse?
It is common for a dental nurse insurance policy to include between £1 million and £5 million in liability cover. The GDC does not state a specific level of indemnity cover that dental nurses should take out. This may leave you worrying about whether you've taken out enough cover. By discussing your dental work with your insurer, the insurance experts can help you choose a level of cover that protects you against a single claim and the possibility of multiple claims across a 12-month period.
If you perform duties not covered as standard on a dental nurse liability insurance policy, you can request additional cover for areas like performing impressions and developing radiographs.
What does “claims made” mean in dental nurse insurance?
Your dental nurse indemnity insurance will be drawn up on a “claims made” basis, which means cover must be in place when you're working and when a claim is made against you. If a claim occurs outside the policy's timeframe, the policy will not cover that claim.
In other words, if you take out a dental nurse insurance policy in January and then a patient makes a claim against you based on an incident in the previous December, your current policy will not be able to deal with that blame - your previous policy would have to be used. For this reason, it's essential that you renew your insurance each year without any time gaps between the two policies.
Do I need run-off cover on my dental nurse indemnity insurance?
Run-off cover is useful for dental nurses because it means that if you've retired or stopped working within the dental profession, you can still be offered financial protection against claims for several years after the alleged incident occurred.
Patients may make their claim for negligence months, if not years, after the fact. Without run-off cover, it will fall upon you alone to finance the legal case and any compensation for backdated claims. If you take out run-off cover that spans up to three years after the policy, you're assured of ultimate protection. Your insurer can check just how long a dental patient has to make such a claim and offer run-off cover that reflects that.
At Park Insurance, we have decades of experience curating specialist policies that meet the needs of the individual. Whether you work in one clinic or share your working week between numerous different settings, we can create a tailored policy that fulfils the GDC requirements. Give Park Insurance a call today to find the right dental nurse indemnity insurance policy to keep you covered.