On the 10th April, the General Dental Council published the working patterns data of general dental practitioners (dentists). This is the single largest source of working patterns data from the four nations. Data were collected from 30,066 dentists, the full report can be seen following this link https://www.gdc-uk.org/news-blogs/news/detail/2025/04/10/gdc-publishes-dentists’-working-patterns-data
This, of course, does have implications for dental nurses who are generally employed to support clinicians and who are able to work at arm’s length under the prescription of clinicians. Dental nurses are key to the delivery of safe levels of care and patient outcomes and with 45960 registered dentists (April 2025) and 66,766 dental registerd (April, 2025) and the messages of not being enough dental nurses, something is certainly not adding up. If those figures are baffling, then consider this further information from America: dentists need an average of 2.7 dental assistants (nurses) for restorative care Conrad et al., 2013).