Source: Radio New Zealand
A dentist provides dental care to a girl. AFP/ Thibaut Durand/ Hans Lucas
A government-led cap on dental school admissions are contributing to workforce shortages for clinics around the country, an oral health expert says.
The New Zealand Dental Association (NZDA) said clinics were going several months short-staffed after it surveyed almost 500 of its members between November and December last year.
The Fees and Dental Workforce Survey 2025, released on Tuesday, showed dental clinics across the country were facing long delays filling vacancies, putting pressure on communities already struggling to access dental care.
On average, it was taking clinics 24 weeks to recruit a dentist, with one-in-four vacancies going over 40 weeks unfilled.
The recruitment barriers were even more pronounced in the regions, where vacancies took close to a year to fill, or even longer.
A recent pop-up clinic offering free dental care in the Hawke’s Bay town of Wairoa was overwhelmed with demand as the township has not had a full-time dentist for five years.
Three-quarters of survey respondents worked in clinics with three or fewer dentists.
NZDA director of dental policy Dr Robin Whyman told RNZ the supply of dental school graduates had stalled.
This was down to domestic intake caps at the country’s only dental school at the University of Otago, he said.
“The number of dentists trained in New Zealand hasn’t really increased since the 1980s. The cap sits at 60 per year at the moment,” Whyman said.
“We think that number needs to rise to keep track with the population.”
NZDA director of dental policy Dr Robin Whyman. Supplied
The country’s population had increased from over 3 million in the 1980s to over 5 million, but the same number of dentists were being trained, Whyman said.
In 2014, the John Key-led government agreed to increase the number of undergraduate domestic dentistry students at Otago for the first time in more than half a century, from 54 to 60.
NZDA president Dave Excell said the figures pointed to growing pressure on both patients and dental teams.
“Clinics are doing everything they can to keep services running, but when positions stay vacant for months, staff are stretched and patients end up waiting longer,” he said.
“When a town like Wairoa has had no resident dentist for years and a free clinic is overwhelmed, it shows how fragile access becomes when the workforce isn’t there.”
Prolonged shortages took a toll beyond the numbers, Dr Excell said
“These gaps aren’t just operational issues because they also affect people.
“Clinicians want to care for their communities, and patients deserve reliable, ongoing access rather than short-term fixes.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
