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The owners of an NHS dental surgery in Bristol, which drew queues of hundreds of people trying to register last week, have said they were only able to reopen because of recruiting practitioners from overseas.
“There are many dentists like us who want to work for the NHS. Why not make it easier for them?” Shivani Bhandari and Gauri Pradhan told the Financial Times, in the wake of the incident to which police were called.
The UK’s dental regulator is facing calls from the industry to speed up the approval of overseas dentists to practice in the NHS, at a time when children’s dental health is deteriorating and waiting lists for appointments are high.
“We are currently in contact with 900 qualified overseas dentists who are working as receptionists, or in some cases supermarkets, while they wait to sit these exams,” said Bhandari, a trustee of the International Dental Organisation in the UK.
The Association of Dental Groups said that obstacles to recruiting almost 2,000 dentists who had qualified overseas was fuelling a “recruitment crisis” in the NHS at a time of staff shortages.
On Friday, the government proposed giving the General Dental Council the power to provisionally register qualified overseas dentists to work in the UK while they wait to pass an Overseas Registration Examination.
Neil Carmichael, ADG chair, said: “Thousands of highly qualified overseas dentists already living in the UK — including 250 Ukrainian refugees — who could be practising in our dental deserts tomorrow, are at present stuck in a backlog of applications waiting to take the ORE.”
The list of those waiting to sit the exam has been largely caused by the GDC’s decision to pause the application process during the coronavirus pandemic.
The ADG said the application process is too long, as are the waiting lists to take the exam, which comes in two parts and costs applicants almost £4,000. In some instances it can take more than two years to complete the ORE.
The industry group is urging the GDC to increase the number of ORE exam places available as well as the frequency of tests. About 30 per cent of all dentists registered to work in the UK trained overseas, according to government figures.
Under current rules, dentists living in the UK who have qualified outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland are required to pass the ORE to work in the UK.
The government changes would allow overseas dentists to work in the UK under the supervision of a fully GDC-registered dentist while they wait to sit the exam. The policy will now be considered under a three-month consultation.
Stefan Czerniawski, executive director of strategy at the GDC, welcomed the proposals as an “exciting opportunity”.
The bid to boost dentist numbers follows a recent report by The Academy Of Medical Sciences found that one in four children are affected by tooth decay by the time they are five.
Data from NHS Digital showed that the proportion of people who had recently visited the dentist was still below pre-pandemic levels after lockdowns caused a sharp drop in dental treatment.
In June 2023, 41 per cent of adults had visited the dentist in the past two years, compared with almost half in June 2019. The share of children who had visited in the past year was 53 per cent, down from 58 per cent before the pandemic.
The GDC said it agreed “improvements are needed” and had already announced plans to triple the number of places available for part 1 of the ORE, increase places for part 2 by one-third and double the size of the registration casework team by March 2024.
A government spokesperson said: “We expect GDC to play its part fully in helping open up the profession to suitably qualified professionals”.
