Transition and Distribution of Dental Hygienists and Nurses in Japan

Abstract

There has been an increasing shortage of dental hygienists in local medical institutions in the recent years. Several studies have investigated the regional distribution of dental hygienists; however, no studies have compared their distribution with those of nurses. In this report, we present the regional distribution of dental hygienists in the communitybased medical care setting and draw comparisons with the distribution of nurses and training schools. The examination numbers for dental hygienists, dental technicians, nurses, public health nurses, midwives, and assistant nurses were analyzed.We observed different trends of change in the number of workers by occupation over the last 20 years (1998 -2018) . The number of dental hygienists and nurses more than doubled during this period, whereas the number of public health nurses and midwives increased by approximately 1.5 times. There was a concomitant decrease in the number of assistant nurses and dental technicians during this period. The numbers of nurses and assistant nurses in a prefecture showed a strong correlation, with the enrolment capacity of local training facilities. This correlation was stronger than that observed between the number of dental hygienists/dental technicians and dental training school capacity. However, no corresponding significant correlation was observed for public health nurses and midwives. The ratio of the number of employees to the number of license holders showed an increase for dental hygienists; however, the corresponding ratio decreased for dental technicians.