June 2022

While the COVID-19 pandemic may no longer dominate headlines, significant pressures on the UK health and social care sector remain. Within dentistry, a profession with a long-standing association with poor mental health, practitioners continue to feel significant strain in terms of working conditions and financial pressures. They now also face a severe backlog of routine care for NHS patients. The years preceding the pandemic saw a growth in evidence regarding the prevalence of mental health issues among dentists, identifying high levels of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and reduced personal accomplishment) and increasing occupational stress, particularly around litigation and regulation, with general dental practitioners the most severely affected (Plessas et al., 2021). More literature has appeared over the last two years, reporting the impact of the global pandemic on stress, anxiety, and burnout in dentistry. International studies show greater psychological distress associated with fears of contracting COVID-19 from patients, anxiety about transmitting the virus to family members, and high levels of concern about the financial viability of dental practice and professional futures (Consolo et al., 2020; Kamran et al., 2021; Shacham et al., 2020).