Neil Carmichael, executive chair of the Association of Dental Groups (ADG), explains why the group backs calls to reform the overseas registration exam (ORE) booking system.
The ADG is aligned with minister Stephen Kinnock when he says utilising our talent-pool of trained international dentists is the ‘low hanging fruit’ option. If the General Dental Council (GDC) can simply unblock the bottleneck that is restricting recruitment by allowing these overseas dentists to take the ORE, we would have an immediate solution to the crippling dental workforce issue that is paralysing our sector and preventing patients getting the access to a dentist that they need.
We have an urgent crisis in our dental workforce across all four nations. The latest figures show that we have 2,744 dentist vacancies across the UK, of which 2,516 are NHS and 228 are private. Then if we look at dental nurses, there are approximately 2,200 vacancies for qualified and/or trainee dental nurses in England.
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