overwhelmed with demand<\/a> as the township has not had a full-time dentist for five years.<\/p>\nThree-quarters of survey respondents worked in clinics with three or fewer dentists.<\/p>\n
NZDA director of dental policy Dr Robin Whyman told RNZ the supply of dental school graduates had stalled.<\/p>\n
This was down to domestic intake caps at the country’s only dental school at the University of Otago, he said.<\/p>\n
“The number of dentists trained in New Zealand hasn’t really increased since the 1980s. The cap sits at 60 per year at the moment,” Whyman said.<\/p>\n
“We think that number needs to rise to keep track with the population.”<\/p>\n
![\"Robin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4NR0KNA_Robin_Whyman_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nNZDA director of dental policy Dr Robin Whyman.
\nPhoto: Supplied\n<\/p>\n
The country’s population had increased from over 3 million in the 1980s to over 5 million, but the same number of dentists were being trained, Whyman said.<\/p>\n
In 2014, the John Key-led government agreed to increase the number of undergraduate domestic dentistry students at Otago for the first time in more than half a century, from 54 to 60.<\/p>\n
NZDA president Dave Excell said the figures pointed to growing pressure on both patients and dental teams.<\/p>\n
“Clinics are doing everything they can to keep services running, but when positions stay vacant for months, staff are stretched and patients end up waiting longer,” he said.<\/p>\n
“When a town like Wairoa has had no resident dentist for years and a free clinic is overwhelmed, it shows how fragile access becomes when the workforce isn’t there.”<\/p>\n
Prolonged shortages took a toll beyond the numbers, Dr Excell said<\/p>\n
“These gaps aren’t just operational issues because they also affect people.<\/p>\n
“Clinicians want to care for their communities, and patients deserve reliable, ongoing access rather than short-term fixes.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dentist provides dental care to a girl. Photo: AFP\/ Thibaut Durand\/ Hans Lucas A government-led cap on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[48,47,134,527,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-335579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JZF78C_AFP__20230628__HL_TDURAND_2098760__v1__HighRes__FraADentalPracticeUnCabinetDentaire_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n