The cross-sectional survey study suggests that figures related to optimum or ideal oral health workforce and fair distribution of the available workforce does not seem to be achieved in many parts of the world. Further attention also needs to be dedicated to general trends that have the capacity to affect future oral health workforce.

High triglycerides and glucose are the components more strongly associated with ferritin. Hepatic injury and BMI appear to influence the ferritin-MetS association, and a threshold effect of high ferritin concentration on the ferritin-high triglycerides association was observed.

Background: There have been efforts to understand the epidemiology of iatrogenic harm in hospitals and primary care and to improve the safety of care provision. There has in contrast been very limited progress in relation to the safety of ambulatory dental care.Objectives: To provide a comprehensive overview of the range and frequencies of existing evidence on patient safety incidents and adverse events in ambulatory dentistry. Methods:We searched MEDLINE and EMBASE for articles reporting events that could have or did result in unnecessary harm in ambulatory dental care. We extracted and synthesized data on the types and frequencies of patient safety incidents and adverse events.Results: Forty articles were included. We found that the frequencies varied very widely between studies; this reflected differences in definitions, populations studied, and sampling strategies. The main 5 PSIs we identified were errors in diagnosis and examination, treatment planning, communication, procedural errors, and the accidental ingestion or inhalation of foreign objects. However, little attention was paid to wider organizational issues.Conclusions: Patient safety research in dentistry is immature because current evidence cannot provide reliable estimates on the frequency of patient safety incidents in ambulatory dental care or the associated disease burden. Well-designed epidemiological investigations are needed that also investigate contributory factors.

Never events (NEs) are a subset of serious patient safety incidents that should not occur if appropriate preventive measures are implemented. Although there is a consensus in medicine, there is no agreement on NEs in dentistry. We undertook an electronic Delphi exercise to develop an international agreement on NEs for primary care dentistry. We initially identified candidate NEs through a systematic review of the literature and then analysed dentistry-related reports in a national incident reporting system. Next, we invited an international panel of 41 experts to complete two rounds of questionnaires; 32 agreed to participate (78%) and completed the first round and 29/41 (71%) members completed the second round. We provided anonymised controlled feedback between rounds and used a cutoff of 80% agreement to define consensus. Consensus was achieved for 23 out of 42 candidate NEs. These related to routine assessment, and preoperative, intra-operative and post-operative stages of dental procedures. To our knowledge, this is the first international expert consensus-based approach that has identified NEs for primary care dentistry. We suggest that dental regulators consider these to support quality assessment and governance activities.

Standardised and reliable methodologies are needed to gather information for successful workforce planning. It is of utmost importance to increase the awareness and understanding of the member National Dental Associations regarding the role, basic elements, benefits, challenges, models and critical elements of an ideal workforce planning system.