Burnout, Stress, and Wellbeing: The Rising Mental Health Crisis in UK Dentistry in Dental Care Professionals. A Quantitative Perspective.

Abstract

Research aim: To determine if dental care professionals working in National Health Service (NHS) practices are more at risk of stress, wellbeing concerns and burnout than their private practice counterparts.

Introduction: In dentistry, stress, anxiety, and wellbeing concerns have been apparent for many years with burnout and poor mental health in dental registrants being described as early as the 1980s.

Methodology: An online platform-based questionnaire was used to administer the chosen scales. Data from 201 participants were analysed (N = 201). The sample consisted of 31 dental nurses and 170 dental hygienists and dental therapists.

Results and conclusions: A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) determined that there was no statistically significant difference between private and mixed practice dental professionals on the combined scales F (3, 190) = 0.76, p = 0.59, Wilks Lambda = 0.97, partial eta squared = 0.12. Dental hygienists, dental therapists and dental nurses working in mixed private and NHS dentistry are not more susceptible to stress, wellbeing issues and anxiety than their private counterparts according to the data set. This suggests that there are other factors associated in the mental health concerns of registered dental care professionals raised by the literature examined. The feelings and frustrations of dental registrants are likely to have lasting consequences for the provision of dentistry if working practices and hierarchical conditions do not improve patient access to both private and NHS dentistry. More research into the stress, wellbeing and burnout levels across dental registrants would be beneficial to explore the effects on the entire dental team, with a focus on solely working in NHS provision.