Serious staff shortage in dental offices around B.C., industry says

If you’re having a tough time getting in to see your dentist, we now know why. The BC Dental Hygienists’ Association confirms there is a lack of certified dental assistants (CDAs), in addition to a shortage of dental hygienists across B.C..

“We’ve heard from some dentists that they’re really having a hard time hiring and they’re having struggles finding hygienists who want to come in on a permanent basis. We are hearing that some of them are using temp agencies, which is great but often the wages are higher, and they don’t develop the same long-term relationship with patients,” BC Dental Hygienists’ Association CEO Andrea Burton said.

Burton, who is also with the CDA Alliance, explains hygienist are independent, meaning they don’t work under the direction of a dentist and are regulated in this province, whereas an assistant works with the dentist.

“You’ll see the dental hygienist often when they’ll do the cleaning of your teeth and maybe they’ll take some time talking about prevention and what they’re seeing in terms of long-term impacts on your teeth. The CDA does the things that the dentist is asking them to do and sometimes that’s within the office doing fluoride and that sort of thing. It’s just a different scope of practice,” Burton said.

Burton says they’re working with CDAs right now to figure out what challenges their field is facing that may be contributing to this shortage.

“There are people in some parts of the province who would argue there isn’t a shortage but, by in large, we’re really hearing from dentists that they’re quite concerned because they’re having a very hard time finding CDAs and they’re having to suggest some pretty extreme ideas for how we can educate and have more.”

She says currently there are more job openings in the dental field in B.C. compared to Ontario, which speaks volumes when you realize that province’s population is about three times more than B.C..

“People are feeling the pinch, for sure and what it results in is, as you said, are shorter clinic hours, troubles providing staffing, a little bit of uncertainty around the staff that you have.”

“It is a great market for employees, so if there are CDAs and dental hygienists that have been waiting in the wings and want to come back to work, we can tell you that you will have no problem doing so, but the challenges are that I think all dental offices took a hit during the pandemic. They had to lay down tools for a while and PPE is expensive and there’s a lot of new costs that have been incurred and so all of that combined with these challenges with providing staff I think has been pretty hard on people. We definitely have to do some balancing around,” Burton said.

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Burton is worried the current situation will only be exacerbated once a new federal dental program is rolled out before the end of the year. The proposal was initially made by the NDP and included in a Liberal-NDP agreement.

The federal budget promised dental care would be available to families with kids under 12 before the end of the year if their household income is less than $70,000 annually.

“We’re having shortages now, suddenly that’s a little bit worrisome when you think about adding a whole new dental plan that many people will have access to dental care that maybe don’t access it right now because they don’t have any coverage. We really do need to keep our eye on what this is going to look like in terms of both dental hygiene and certified dental assistants because we need to be ready when that plan comes. So, we’ll see how that turns out.”

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Dr. Philip Chang has a practice in Vancouver’s Chinatown neighbourhood and says it is an ongoing issue in the industry.

“There’s a Lower Mainland Facebook group and you can see it every day, there’s at least four, five, six postings for people looking for full-time staff, part-time staff, temps and a lot of times you can see that nobody responds to the postings because there’s just no one looking for work.”

Chang says it was really difficult to find staff, but now has the staff he needs. He says there’s constant chatter among local dentists about hiring concerns.

“I used to have a lot of temps and stuff like that and that’s not really the best because you don’t build up a relationship. They don’t have any skin in the game so you can’t really hold them accountable if they aren’t doing a quality job. They don’t really care, they’re just here for the money. I actually poached the hygienist who worked for me before that wasn’t happy with her office, so I was lucky to get work back, although at a much higher cost than she was working before.”

Both Chang and Burton also stress concerns around renewed testing in this profession required by regulating colleges in B.C..

“There are dental hygienists who have to write a regular exam every five years to demonstrate their competencies and there are dental hygienists who are quite upset about that and are actively stating they will leave the profession. It is a stressor that, I think, some hygienists are reacting to. A lot of them have not written the exam, so they’re afraid of something they haven’t actually seen, but there’s also a question of harmonization and there are other health professions who have to do the same rigorous exam, so there are a lot of questions around that.”

Chang adds to that, questioning why hygienists must take continuous testing, but dentists don’t.

One dental office in the Burquitlam area tells CityNews they’ve had to close an extra day of the week and until further notice, and as a result, there are no hygienists working on Saturdays.