The inaugural 2024 cohort of the Adult Restorative Dental Care postgraduate certificate take a break from their studies.
The University of Otago’s Faculty of Dentistry is hoping to take pressure off Aotearoa’s overburdened healthcare system with the creation and implementation of a new postgraduate certificate.
Teaching for the year-long Adult Restorative Dental Care certificate recently began and is designed to enable practising dental therapists and oral health therapists to provide restorative dental care (fillings) to patients aged 18 years and older.
Course coordinator Associate Professor Susan Moffat says having dental and oral health therapists qualified in this way may help ease the patient load other dental experts are currently facing, particularly in rural areas where there are more workforce shortages.
“Currently dental therapists provide routine oral health care to children and adolescents but are not allowed to provide this care to adults,” Susan says.
“While oral health therapists can provide some care for adults, as well as care to children and adolescents, they have a condition on their practice limiting the restorative dental care they can provide to patients who are under 18 years of age.”
Prior to the creation of this postgraduate course, achieving an additional qualification from the Dental Council of New Zealand was the only way dental and oral health therapists could provide restorative treatment for adults – and that pathway was not available in New Zealand.
The Dental Council accredited Otago’s new certificate in September 2023 to remedy this issue, allowing tauira to apply to either add a new scope of practice (dental therapists) or remove the adult restorative exclusion from their scope of practice (oral health therapists) once they complete this certificate.
In Australia, dental therapists and oral health therapists also treat adults dependent on their qualification and, in the United Kingdom, dental therapists have cared for patients of all ages since 2002.
Enabling therapists to provide care for adults is likely to improve access to dental treatment and make it more affordable, thereby reducing New Zealand’s treatment inequalities for a significant proportion of the population, particularly low-income adults, Māori, Pacific, and older patients.
Kōrero by the Division of Health Sciences Communications Adviser, Kelsey Swart