The recent news of BUPA’s imminent departure from dental practices across the UK has provided a sense of focus for the sector to address the ongoing skills shortage many dental practices currently face. The major private healthcare group has cited dentist recruitment as one of the main challenges it faced leading up to its decision to close 85 practices. This insight comes as little surprise given the overarching struggle to recruit dentists across the UK – a pain point being felt by both professionals and patients alike throughout the country.

As a sector, we need to be more proactive in helping young dentists navigate their early career paths, and work hard to retain the many, many excellent dentists we already have within Scotland.

How can we do this? I believe the answer is in innovation and creating a learning environment that develops best in class professionals. We can improve our NHS and private dentistry in Scotland by providing world-leading training and access to specialists, being at the forefront of the digital dentistry revolution and offering the best in technique and technology to our clinicians and support teams, and of course, to our patients.

Testament to our approach, 2023 has been coined Clyde Munro’s Year of Learning and Development, during which we will set out to positively impact the ongoing recruitment and retention issues across the sector.

However, this will only be possible with the appropriate investment in skills development and training. Additionally, we need to bring world-leading technology and digital dentistry to the ambitious and passionate dentists of Scotland, ensuring they are less likely to look to other countries in order to progress.

We have committed to prioritising the retention of world-class dentists within Scotland through our Perth-based Advanced Dentistry and Clinical Skills Centre.

The million-pound investment facility is one of many solutions we are embarking upon in a bid to increase dentist recruitment and importantly, upskill and retain those we do already have. We are doing this through our academy, providing virtual training opportunities with world-class specialists, and classes for practical skills development with our nine simulator "phantom head" stations and industry-leading technology including a dental CBCT, Intra Oral Scanners, state of the art surgery, milling and printing technology, allowing visitors to experience the most up to date in digital workflow.

Not only do we need to be offering dentists the best skills development and equipment, but we need to work with young dentists a lot more closely to support them on the transition from university to employment.

We do this through a newly-launched programme called Flying Start which provides young dentists with practical career, finance and business advice and guidance, as well as dental skills development.

Our industry needs a sector-wide futureproofing plan. Our custom-built academy may be a considerable milestone for our group but we also see it as a critical initiative for the sector as a whole, helping the industry with the retention and recruitment of dentists in Scotland.

We are committed to providing quality and consistent NHS services and private services and ultimately improving the patient care journey. I hope to work with our colleagues and sector counterparts to address the shortage of dentists and to improve the care we provide to all of the people across Scotland.

Fiona Wood is Chief Operating Officer at Clyde Munro Dental Group