Graduate dentist numbers need to double to halt ‘crisis’
THE number of new dentists each year needs to double in order to meet demand, according to the Irish Dental Association.
President of the IDA Dr Caroline Robins said that at least 500 graduate dentists are needed each year to meet the needs of a rising population.
Only 200 are currently registering with the Dental Council each year.
Dr Robins said the two dental schools at University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin do not produce enough dentists to meet demand.
Only about a third of those registering with the Dental Council each year come from Irish dental schools, with the majority coming from abroad.
Dr Robins called for a prioritisation of the expansion of the dental school at University College Cork which ‘has been long promised but not delivered’.
She said: ‘Dental practices are unable to deal with the volume of patients that are arriving to their clinics, and recruitment of associate dentists, dental hygienists and dental nurses is at an all-time low.
‘The number of graduates remaining in Ireland after graduation and training as GDPs [general dental practitioner] has fallen to crisis levels.’
An IDA spokesman told the Irish Daily Mail that some Irish graduates are choosing to move into cosmetic dentistry because of better pay.
He said: ‘The pay and conditions within public dentistry has been a barrier to recruitment and that’s on top of the fact that we’re not graduating enough dentists.
‘We’ve done surveys of our members and we’ve heard that there are practices where it is taking them six months to find an appropriate candidate and there’s some that haven’t found any.
‘Public dentistry being under-resourced has led to a massive waiting list of the School Dental Screening Programme.
‘There’s a waiting list of over 100,000 children that are eligible to be seen on that scheme but there’s just not enough public dentists. This leads to a worsening situation nationally in terms of oral health care.’
He added that staff shortages are causing long waits for dental surgery, with 2,950 children on public dental surgery lists for procedures under general anaesthetic and some waiting for as long as six years. The association also called for the Government to reform the medical card scheme, estimating that less than 700 dentists remain on the scheme.
Chief executive Fintan Hourihan said: ‘Dentists have consistently voiced their concerns regarding the limitations of the scheme, the red tape dentists must follow to treat medical card patients, and the limited materials they can use while treating medical card patients.
‘What we see now is a twotier system whereby private patients are subsidising medical card patients yet medical card patients are not afforded the same treatment plans as private patients.
‘Dentists want the autonomy to treat patients as necessary according to their needs.’
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly recently allocated an additional €10million to the scheme to allow for a fee increase for contracted dentists and the reintroduction of scale and polish treatments for medical card holders.
The Department of Further and Higher Education was contacted for comment regarding increasing places on dentistry courses.
‘Recruitment is at an all-time low’