Demand for DCPs set to rise
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- Published: Tuesday, 11 November 2014 07:18
- Written by News Editor
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The Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) has published a report on demand and supply for the dental care professionals (DCP) workforce in England between 2013 and 2025. It found that demand for hygienists, therapists, and nurses would rise significantly during this period, but would not be matched by supply. It follows an earlier report on dentists which led to a cut in student numbers.
The report says: ‘Our rising demand forecasts for dental hygienists, dental therapists, orthodontic therapists and dental nurses reflect the view expressed to us by stakeholders across the dental sector that, in future, DCPs could undertake a significantly greater share of the dental care workload (possibly as much as between 40 and 50 per cent by 2025 as opposed to 20 per cent today, provided there is a concerted and coordinated effort to achieve this across the system).
‘Our supply forecasts – which are based on current annual training intakes – show that the numbers of dental hygienists, dental therapists and dental nurses are not likely to grow significantly without intervention.
‘Our demand forecasts reflect the skill mix stakeholders told us they believe to be appropriate for the future DCP workforce. On this basis there is a risk of a potential undersupply of dental hygienists, dental therapists and dental nurses, and a potential small oversupply of orthodontic therapists (if this workforce were to continue to expand rapidly at the current rate1); it would therefore be prudent to keep the number of training places under review over the next 10 years. We acknowledge it may take longer than 10 years to implement a major shift in the dental workforce.
‘Increasing the supply of DCPs by creating additional training places will need to be reinforced by other measures such as:
- implementation of a dental contract that no longer bases remuneration purely on practice activity
- introduction of a scheme to incentivise supporting older people in maintaining their oral health
- training for dentists in the effective use of DCPs
- actions to remedy dental estate (space) restrictions.’
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