Dentists' working patterns data

Here we publish a summary of the working patterns questions that the GDC included as part of the Dentist Annual Renewal in December 2023. The survey was voluntary and 25,159 dentists (57% of all dentists on our register) responded, of which 24,152 (55% of all dentists on our register) were working in the UK dental sector.

This is a first release of the data that presents summary tables of counts and percentages. We plan to release more analysis and outputs later in 2024.

Highlights from the dentist work patterns data survey

Of the responding dentists:

• Over 97% are working in the dental sector. Less than 15 (0.7%) are seeking work.
• 88% are working primarily as a dentist, and a further 9% are working as a specialist.
• Over half (52%) are self-employed/agency or working as a locum. Only around a quarter (26%) are employees.
• 85% are working predominantly (over 75%) or fully in clinical roles, with a further 10% undertaking a mix of clinical and non-clinical work.
• 42% work 30 hours/week or less.
• Around 70% work in a general or specialist dental practice. 7% work in a dental hospital, 5% in a hospital and 5% in community dental services.
• Almost four in ten (37%) regularly work in more than one location, with 62% commonly working in one location.
• 19% provide only private care, with no NHS, and a further 14% said they worked predominantly (over 75% of their time) in private care.
• Only 15% of responding dentists are fully NHS, with no private care, and a further 27% said they worked predominantly (over 75% of their time) in NHS care.
• Four out of five (80%) work in England, 11% in Scotland, 5% in Wales and 4% in Northern Ireland.

The questions included:

• Whether dentists are working in the dental sector
• The primary field of practice for dentists
• Dentists' employment situation within the dental sector (employed, self employed etc)
• Average time dentists spend between clinical and non-clinical work
• The number of hours per week dentists work as a dental professional
• Types of dental settings dentists are employed in (e.g general practice, hospital)
• Number of places of work that dentists work in
• Types of care that dentists deliver (NHS/private/mixed)

Interpreting the data

In depth analysis of the data is planned for later in 2024. The following notes will help with interpretation of the summary data tables.  

Key categories reported

The data is reported by the following sub-categories:

• Clinical
• Non-Clinical
• Mixed Clinical/Non-Clinical
• NHS
• Private
• Mix of NHS and Private.

Each category is derived from a working pattern question only. It is not cross referenced with any external definition. Further detail can be found on the Definitions page in the summary table file. These categories have been self-selected by the respondents. The GDC has not recoded or validated the data. 

Missing Values

Respondents had the opportunity to skip the question or, to select ‘Prefer not to say'.

Registrants working in dentistry

We have only included respondents who answered for question 1 'Are you currently working in the dental sector?' either 'Yes' or 'No, but seeking work in the dental sector'.

Duplicates

In this round of reporting (March 2024) only those with an active dentist registration are counted. There is only one response per registration. The only instance in this data collection where someone would fill out more than one set of questions is if they have registration both as a DCP and as a dentist.

DCP/Dentist

The questions are embedded into eGDC and promoted as part of the dentist annual renewal. These questions are also available to DCPs in their eGDC portal. The DCP responses will be reported on after DCP annual renewal is completed in July.

Multi-code questions

Multi-code questions can be identified by the question instruction 'Select all that apply'. The totals are calculated by the number of responses, not the number of respondents. This means that totals for these questions will be greater than the number of people who completed the question. This is indicated in the data tables.

Location data

Counts for each country are based upon the number of registrants who stated they worked in that country (not postcode data).  Where multiple locations of work are selected for the question: 'As a dental professional, where do you work? (Select all that apply)' the registrant has been included in counts for all the locations – this is labelled in the data tables. Where registrants have selected ‘Prefer not to say’ for country location in UK, they have been removed from the nation breakdowns.

UK registrants working outside the UK

In the summary tables the data for those working 'Outside of the UK' are for those who are only working outside the UK. These people have GDC registration that allows them to practice in the UK, but are currently only working abroad.

Employment postcode

Postcode district level data (e.g. PO23 xxx) was collected, not full postcode data. This is to provide a level of anonymity for registrants. This field could also be left blank. Responses are not included in this release, but will be included in when we do further analyses.

How we developed the questions

The questions provide data on whether registrants are employed in the dental sector, how they are working, how many hours and in which setting and sector they are working, and where they are working.

We looked at existing information on collecting working patterns data including sources from the NHS, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Government Statistical Service (GSS) and the Institute for Social and Economic Research.

We combined this with questions previously developed for our research and tested with dental professionals.

In order to minimise the burden on respondents, we used fixed response options to capture factual data about working patterns. It took most respondents 5 minutes or less to complete the survey.