Migrant dentists, health system responses and future challenges: a case study of the United Kingdom and Australia

ABSTRACT

Dentists, managing highly prevalent oral disease are in demand across the world and hence potentially highly mobile. Both the United Kingdom and Australia, continue to be favourable destinations for migrant dentists. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the professional integration of migrant dentists in the UK and Australia, and health system responses, while explicating implications for future health workforce governance. In doing so, the paper adopts a system-thinking approach to analyse interactions between the migration system and other societal systems. This is the first multi-country study to analyse the professional integration of migrant dentists through the lens of health workforce and migration governance. The study draws on semi-structured qualitative interviews with migrant dentists in both countries, together with national systems registration and examination data and relevant policies, together with data from government and global datasets. Both countries are high-income countries with a relatively large dentist-to-population ratio maintained through reliance on migrant dentists. The health systems and migration governance have responded by increasing the number of local graduates with limited success in the UK, potentially due to organisational demands, and the multifactorial complex mutual influences between higher education systems, labour market, feedback loops and dentist migration systems creating a nexus.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• dentist
• professional integration
• Brexit
• COVID-19

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Information team at the General Dental Council for their support in providing the registrant data information. Madhan Balasubramanian acknowledges the NHMRC Sidney Sax Fellowship in Public Health and Health Services (GNT number: 1121576). Madhan Balasubramanian acknowledges support received from the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health, the University of Adelaide during the conduct of the Australian component of the study. We thank the participants, especially migrant dentists involved in the studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).