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Friday, 30 June 2006 10:49

BNN: British Nursing News Online · www.bnn-online.co.uk

Targets for dentistry will not be met

An Executive report on the future of dental practices in Scotland found that Scotland is short of more than 100 dentists this year and will fail to reach the target for another six years.

The latest figures, compiled by the NHS information and statistics division, show that although the number of NHS High Street dentists, currently 2367, is increasing, it falls short of requirements by 120. This gap is expected to disappear by 2012.

Andrew Lamb, BDA director for Scotland, said: "People already know that there is a shortage of dentists here and many are unable to access dental care because of this. While it's good that longer term workforce issues are being addressed by training more dentists, the executive must also tackle problems facing patients and dentists today."

He renewed the BDA's call for a full review of the executive's recruitment and retention incentives so that their effect on easing the problems many people have in accessing dental care could be assessed. He also called for the views of the dental profession to be properly considered in workforce planning.

"Unless urgent action is taken to resolve the issue about the way dentists' commitment to the NHS is measured, our concern is that many more patients could lose access to NHS dentistry," he said.

Shadow Health Minister Shona Robison said: "These figures show that it is highly unlikely that the Lib-Lab executive will meet their target to recruit enough dentists to meet the needs of the NHS by 2012."

Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald said: "I am convinced we will continue to see these numbers increase, in line with our dental action plan targets over the coming months. The number of dentists who undertook their vocational training in Scotland last year was an all-time high of 135. This has increased further to 145 funded posts in 2006 and will increase again to 155 in 2007.

"The main problem of access to NHS dentistry is for adult patients who are deregistered against their will and then forced to pay for private treatment. For us to invest money without setting a threshold for the number of adult NHS patients a dentist must treat would compound this problem, not solve it”.

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