Retirement intentions of dentists in New South Wales, Australia

The Dentist Retirement Intentions Survey was mailed to 768 NSW Australian Dental Association members aged over 50 and achieved a response rate of 20%. T-tests, ANOVAs and multivariate regression were used to analyse the data.On average, participants intend to retire at the age of 66, although they would prefer to do so earlier (p < 0.05). Those intending to leave the workforce within the next 5 years represent 43%. The most common reasons dentists expect to retire are to have more leisure time, to be able to afford to stop working, and job stress or pressure.The current generation of older dentists intends to retire later than their predecessors. Most wish to remain involved in dentistry in some capacity following retirement, and may assist in overcoming workforce shortages, either by practising part time or training dental students.In line with many professions within Australia, the dental workforce has aged significantly since 1986 [1]. With the majority of dentists aged in the 40-48 year age group, this pattern is expected to continue [2], and by 2026 around half of the current practicing dentists will have retired [1]. This ageing of the dental workforce has been flagged as a limitation to meeting the increasing demand for dental care [3].The ageing of the Australian dental workforce and the predicted worsening of current workforce shortages has been well documented in recent years [1,3-5]. However, these predictions have been based on the retirement patterns of past cohorts of dentists. Workforce demographics have changed substantially over the last two decades [1,3-5]. There has been an increase in the proportion of female dentists, and older dentists are constituting an increasing proportion of the workforce [1,6].As such, past trends may not tell us the whole story about the future. For example, female dentists generally retire earlier than their male counterparts. Furthermore, the view of many older workers in the past has been that retirement is not the en