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The shortage of dental practitioners is a pressing challenge in dentistry across Europe, and forecasts predict that it will be a market condition for years. As a result, high-end clinic design, ergonomic working environment and modern equipment become opportunities to attract talent.
Lack of educated dental professionals and increased competition in the dental market make it still more challenging to get the best – or even enough – dental staff. The situation is in the employees’ favor, and employers can no longer pick and choose between applicants.
Jashar Samadi is the founder and owner of Tandfakta, a dental recruitment business based in Sweden and operating in the Nordics with more than 10.000 members in their network. Jashar and his team have matched candidates and dental employers with great success for almost ten years, and he recognizes that attracting talent has become increasingly difficult.
“We see a general shortage of skilled staff, and it seems to be worse after the pandemic. At the moment, the number of patients is overwhelming because treatments have been postponed, and many clinics lack resources to keep up. Lately, some clinics outside the larger cities even had to close because they couldn’t recruit sufficient staff,” Jashar explains.
Jashar Samadi
Trine Høgsbro
Attracting talent with non-financial benefits
The shortage makes recruitment the employees’ market, and applicants now put more emphasis on non-financial aspects, like the clinic’s vision, interior design, and, not least, the dental equipment and instruments.
Ergonomic equipment not only protects the practitioners’ professional health but also makes the workday more comfortable. Trine Høgsbro, a dental nurse at Praxis, Vedbæk, Denmark, says: “I have worked with XO units for many years and sitting on the XO seat (the saddle chair) makes the long patient treatments so much easier for me, and the daily cleaning and disinfection of XO units is super easy.”
Going forward, we can expect that the younger generation dentists will be still more attentive to ergonomics. Today, dental education institutions/universities teach young dentists about ergonomics, but upon graduation it is hard for newly graduated to identify clinics equipped with dental units that allows the dentists to work in healthy and ergonomic postures; that is, taking professional work health precautions.
Aliza Sakhra, a young dental nurse studying in Germany within her final years to become a dentist, says: “At the university, we are only being taught to operate the standard dental unit with all instruments placed to the right, instead of in the over-the-patient-delivery system. This is crazy, for instance also because we have left-handed dental students that have great trouble using the old-fashioned units. Neither is it ergonomically friendly, nor very hygienic to have to stop and turn around, away from the patient, to put down or pick up instruments – compared to the smoother workflow in the over-the-patient delivery system”.
Wow beats ordinary
Using clinic design to stand out and attract talent comes with an added benefit. If a clinic looks great, has a beautiful interior, and leaves you with a “wow” feeling, it will attract both talent and patients.
Read more about how to design the perfect dental practice
Aliza Sakhra