Predicting the dental workforce: Flood, famine, hysteria or hysteresis?

Abstract

&NA; Dental workforce predictions have been at the forefront of the minds of professionals and governments for many years. However, the relative inaccuracy of these predictions has not been closely scrutinised. We have rested on the old adage that ‘the past is a predictor of the future’. In reality, with the substantive external environmental pressures that come to bear on workforce participation in dentistry, the underpinning assumptions are called into question.