The Datum Report

Occupation 3213 · Associate professional occupations

Medical and dental technicians

Half of full-time medical and dental technicians in the UK earn more than £29,931 a year, and half earn less.

Medical and dental technicians operate, calibrate and maintain cardiographic and encephalographic testing equipment, assist in the conduct of post mortems, give simple dental treatments, fit artificial limbs and hearing aids, and undertake a wide range of related medical and dental tasks.

How people enter it

Entrants usually possess GCSEs/S grades, BTEC/SQA awards, an Intermediate GNVQ/GSVQ level II or A levels/H grades. Training may last up to five years depending upon the field and method of study. Professional qualifications and NVQs/SVQs at level 3 are available in some areas.

What the work involves

• operates equipment to diagnose and record or treat hearing, heart, brain, lung and kidney ailments
• undertakes scaling and polishing of teeth, applies medicaments, carries out post-operative hygiene work and advises on preventative dentistry
• makes dentures, crowns, bridges, orthodontic and other dental appliances according to individual patient requirements
• measures patients for, and fits them with, surgical appliances, hearing aids and artificial limbs
• performs related medical tasks including treating hair and scalp disorders and conducting tests on glaucoma patients
• takes samples for clinical examination

Also called

Cardiographer · Dental hygienist · Dental technician · Medical technical officer · Ocularist · Orthopaedic technician · Radiography assistant practitioner

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for medical and dental technicians, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 9 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Complementary health associate professionals · Dispensing opticians · Health associate professionals n.e.c. · Pharmaceutical technicians