All dental practitioners must be registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) to practise in Australia. There is a range of different types of registration to match different levels of training and experience. Most dental practitioners have general registration. General registration divisions include dentists, dental prosthetists, dental hygienists, oral health therapists and dental therapists. Dentists may also qualify and be eligible for specialist registration. There are 13 approved dental specialities in Australia (Dental Board of Australia 2018).
Data presented in this section were sourced from the National Health Workforce Dataset (NHWDS).
Key terms
Full-time equivalent (FTE) rate: The FTE rate (number of FTE dental practitioners per 100,000 population) is a measure of supply. By defining supply in terms of the FTE rate, meaningful comparisons of supply can be made across geographic areas and over time.
Size and distribution of the dental workforce
Data on the size and distribution of the dental workforce is required to understand the current dental workforce and its capacity to meet the community’s needs for prevention and treatment of oral disease.
The number of all registered dental practitioners in Australia has increased from 20,469 in 2013 to 24,626 in 2020
- The number of registered dentists in Australia has increased from 15,479 in 2013 to 18,383 in 2020.
- Around 9 in 10 of all dental practitioners registered in 2020 were employed in their field.
- The proportion of dentists employed in their field has remained relatively stable, ranging from 89% in 2013 to 91.4% in 2019 with a slight reduction to 91.1% in 2020.
Explore the data using the Dental workforce interactive 1 below.