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Mandatory vaccination plans set to devastate dental services

2 mins read Employment issues
The British Dental Association (BDA) has warned fast-tracked parliamentary approval of mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers is set to have a calamitous impact on dental services already stretched to breaking point, with new evidence suggesting levels of hesitancy could push thousands out of the workforce.

According to a survey of high street dentists in England:

NHS England has acknowledged it has no indication of vaccine uptake among the high street NHS dental workforce and other contractors like GPs, who deliver NHS services but are not NHS employees. Dentist leaders stress this data gives the clearest indication yet of the potential scale of the damage that mandating vaccinations could cause.

Under new regulations staff will risk facing the sack if they are not double jabbed by next April. With recruitment and retention problems already endemic among both dentists and the wider team, any exodus will have devastating consequences for patient access. The service is already facing unprecedented backlogs, with over 37 million NHS dental appointments lost since the first lockdown due to service shut-down and infection control measures.

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