Stop, collaborate and listen – the dental landscape in Ireland

Gary Nelson, area manager for Practice Plan in Ireland, discusses the dental landscape in Ireland and the challenges the profession faces.

What’s the dental landscape like at the moment?

It’s chaotic –I think would be the right way to describe it. It’s pretty much the same as the UK in terms of the demand is outstripping supply. But demand is not just outstripping supply in healthcare dentistry. Or what I call the most basic restorative care.

It’s outstripping demand in cosmetic dentistry, it’s outstripping demand in implant dentistry. It seems to be that in every facet of dentistry, there’s just not enough hands to cope with the demand of that.

We’re also seeing over here more and more dentists are moving to independent practice. But they’re not moving for financial reasons. They’re moving to try and cope with the demands of their patients, and the increased demands from societies as a whole.

Over here we are also seeing associate dentists moving from their NHS job and into an independent job. Again, that’s not for financial reasons. It’s to do with the quality of care that they can provide for a set number of people.

And then there’s a trend that I’ve been seeing for quite some time now. Twenty years ago a dentist came through dental school and may practise dentistry in the general practice for 30 years before retiring.

Whereas you’re now seeing so many different facets of dentistry – you’ve got your bonding market, you’ve got your implants, you’ve got your facial aesthetics, your digital smile design, your snoring solutions.

So young dentists are now moving faster into those facets of dentistry. That’s creating a global shortage again in what I call the healthcare dentistry market. I think the landscape has probably changed forever.

What are the positives?

My advice to dentists is to have a career but have longevity in your career. Find what facet you love. If you just go in and do healthcare dentistry for 30 years and retire, it’s almost like a bit like a production line up where you’re doing the same thing day after day, after day.

Whereas to gain longevity in your career, you really have to find your area. That allows you to still practise some form of healthcare dentistry, but also it allows you to gain personal satisfaction from whatever facet you enjoy most. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just that it is having a massive impact on the numbers of dentists who are providing general care.

What changes have you seen? How has it changed your role?

If you go back five years, 10 years, my role was to try and help grow businesses and help them market, help them communicate, help them grow their plan numbers. Whereas now it’s more of a mental health role. You’re almost trying to help dentists with the problems that they’re faced with day in, day out.

One of those major problems as well is hygienists. We, in Belfast, haven’t had a hygiene school in Queen’s University for over 10 years now. So that’s over 10 years where the output of hygienists hasn’t happened.

So the shortage of hygienists have been increasing and increasing. But now we’re in the perfect storm where as more practices are moving independent, they recognise the need for hygienists but there simply aren’t any out there.

So that’s having a major impact on the time management for dentists because dentists are then having to put a lot of that perio work back into their own diary. This isn’t best for them because, at the end of the day, dentists are trained to repair teeth.

Hygienists are trained to do the perio side better. So it is better that patients, if they’re in an independent marketplace, see a hygienist. So that’s another situation that that you know it doesn’t really have a short-term answer.

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