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International registration of dental professionals: A changing landscape

BDJ In Practice volume 37, pages 132–133 (2024)Cite this article

Dental professionals who trained and qualified outside the UK make an enormous contribution to providing dental care. In recent years, these professionals, particularly dentists, have formed a steadily growing proportion of the overall workforce. At the end of 2022, 29% of all dentists were internationally qualified - but 46% of dentists who joined the register that year came from overseas.1 So making sure that we can be confident that they reach the same high standards we expect of UK graduates and that prospective registrants are clear about what they need to do to demonstrate those standards are extremely important not just to the individuals concerned, but for the dental workforce as a whole.

For applicants from most of the rest of the world, the route to registration as a dentist is by passing the Overseas Registration Examination - the ORE. But access to places has been a frustrating challenge for candidates, partly because the need to suspend exam sittings during the pandemic inevitably built up a backlog, but mostly because strict legal constraints on how the exam could operate made it very hard to match the supply of places to demand.

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References

  1. GDC analysis based on data published at www.gdc-uk.org/about-us/what-we-do/the-registers/registration-reports (accessed March 2024).

  2. General Dental Council. Registration in the UK of dentists and dental care professionals who have qualified overseas. Available online at: www.gdc-uk.org/about-us/what-we-do/registration-in-the-uk-of-dentists-and-dcps-qualified-overseas (accessed March 2024).

  3. Department of Health & Social Care. Professional qualifications - EU Exit standstill provisions: review by the Secretary of State. 7 September, 2023. Available online at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/professional-qualifications-eu-exit-standstill-provisions-review-by-the-secretary-of-state/professional-qualifications-eu-exit-standstill-provisions-review-by-the-secretary-of-state (accessed March 2024).

  4. Department of Health & Social Care. Policy paper: Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry. 7 February, 2024. Available online at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/our-plan-to-recover-and-reform-nhs-dentistry/faster-simpler-and-fairer-our-plan-to-recover-and-reform-nhs-dentistry (accessed March 2024).

  5. Department of Health & Social Care. Open consultation: Provisional registration for overseas-qualified dentists. 16 February, 2024. Available online at: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/provisional-registration-for-overseas-qualified-dentists/provisional-registration-for-overseas-qualified-dentists#what-introducing-provisional-registration-for-overseas-qualified-dentists-will-mean (accessed March 2024).

  6. General Dental Council. Maintaining an effective workforce. Available online at: www.gdc-uk.org/news-blogs/news/detail/2024/03/15/maintaining-an-effective-workforce (accessed March 2024).

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  1. General Dental Council, London, United Kingdom

    Stefan Czerniawski

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  1. Stefan Czerniawski
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Correspondence to Stefan Czerniawski.

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Czerniawski, S. International registration of dental professionals: A changing landscape. BDJ In Pract 37, 132–133 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41404-024-2690-1

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