By Sara Jalloul, Orthodontic Therapist & Student Dental Therapist
Burnout in dentistry is often discussed in terms of individual wellbeing. However, its implications extend far beyond how clinicians feel, influencing patient safety, team dynamics, and the sustainability of dental services.
This three-part series explores burnout through a wider lens:
- Part 1 examines how burnout directly affects clinical performance and patient safety
- Part 2 explores its impact on teams, patients, and organisations
- Part 3 considers how reframing burnout as a shared responsibility can support meaningful change
Together, these articles aim to highlight why clinician wellbeing is not just central to practice — but central to safe, effective care.
Dentistry ranks among the most stressful healthcare professions, shaped by time pressure, high patient expectations, technical precision, and a heavily regulated, complaint-prone environment. [1] A 2025 Dental Protection survey of more than 1,600 UK dental professionals found that 63% felt frequently burnt out or exhausted, 50% felt pressure to take on extra work or hours, 48% reported feeling disillusioned or disengaged, and 18% described their mental wellbeing as “of concern”. [2] These figures are reinforced by the MINDSET UK Survey 2023, which captured the views of 1,507 dental team members across all four UK nations and found high levels of burnout, depressive symptoms, and experienced trauma throughout the workforce. [3] Together, these findings signal a profession under serious strain, one where burnout threatens not only individual clinicians, but also patient safety, team functioning, and the long-term sustainability of dental services.
If the human cost is steep, the professional cost is steeper. Burnout is not just a personal challenge; it is a risk to patient safety, team stability, and organisational reputation. We need to shift our lens: clinician wellbeing is not a soft issue, it is a core pillar of safe, sustainable dental practice. [4]
What is burnout?
The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon, characterised by three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and reduced personal efficacy. [5] In dentistry, these are compounded by repetitive physical strain (sustained static postures, fine motor work), tight scheduling, heavy regulatory and administrative demands, and a persistent fear of complaints or fitness-to-practise investigations. The GDC’s 2021 Rapid Evidence Assessment confirmed these systemic stressors are among the most significant drivers of poor mental health in the dental team. [4]
In orthodontic settings, where patient flow is high and protocols are rigid, these pressures can become normalised until chronic overload is seen as “just part of the job”. The MINDSET UK qualitative findings identified six core themes driving this: workload, the NHS system, regulatory compliance and litigation, financial pressures, leadership and management, and self-worth. [3] Over time, this normalisation means warning signs of burnout are missed or minimised.
How burnout affects patient safety
Burnout does not just change how clinicians feel, it changes how they practise. Across healthcare, the evidence is clear. A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the BMJ, involving researchers from the University of Manchester and the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, found that physician burnout is significantly associated with increased errors, lower patient satisfaction, reduced career engagement, and higher intention to leave. [6] These findings translate directly to dentistry:
- Errors and near-misses rise: burned-out clinicians are more likely to self-report clinical mistakes. [6]
- Quality and safety indicators decline: poorer staff wellbeing is linked to higher rates of safety incidents. [6]
- Complaints and legal risk increase: burnout has been identified as a predictor of patient complaints and malpractice claims. [7]
- Protocol adherence suffers: exhaustion and disengagement reduce compliance with clinical guidelines and checklists. [3]
- Workforce loss accelerates: in 2021, 58% of NHS general dental practitioners reported intentions to leave or reduce their NHS commitment within five years. [8]
In a dental or orthodontic setting, these risks become very concrete hazards: incomplete consent documentation, lapses in infection control, missing steps in treatment protocols, inadequate follow-up, recall failures, or simply rushing procedures. In aggregate, these “small slips” are exactly the kinds of failures that escalate into patient harm, complaints, and regulatory or legal consequences. [7]
The real impact of burnout
Practitioner A is a skilled clinician with years of experience. Over time, their clinic’s patient load increased, staff shortages emerged, and administrative demands escalated. Clinically, A began skipping the usual pause between patients, rushing explanations of risk, sometimes failing to re-check orthodontic appliance alignments fully, and occasionally neglecting to update charts immediately.
On one occasion, a patient’s retainer instructions were not clearly documented. Weeks later, a complaint about inadequate follow-up was lodged. The root cause was not incompetence; it was exhaustion stacking upon cumulative pressure until small errors crept in.
Following the complaint and with support from their practice and indemnity organisation, Practitioner A reviewed their workload and working patterns. They reduced their clinical days, established clearer boundaries around administrative time, and built in micro-breaks between sessions. Over several months, A reported their concentration, empathy, and satisfaction gradually returning, with fewer near-misses and a more sustainable work–life balance.
This resolution does not remove all pressures, but it illustrates a key principle of burnout recovery: meaningful change often requires structural adjustments to workload and working patterns, not just more individual “resilience”.
References
[1] Collin, V., Toon, M., O’Selmo, E., Reynolds, L., & Whitehead, P. (2019). A survey of stress, burnout and well-being in UK dentists. British Dental Journal, 226(1), 40–49. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2019.6
[2] Dental Protection. (2025, February 26). Two-thirds of dental professionals burnt out and exhausted. Medical Protection Society Limited. https://www.dentalprotection.org/uk/articles/two-thirds-of-dental-professionals--burnt-out-and-exhausted
[3] Knights, J., Young, L., Humphris, G., & Newton, T. (2025). Me, we, they: identifying the key stressors affecting the dental team – findings from the MINDSET UK Survey 2023. British Dental Journal, 239, 196–202. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-025-8645-z
[4] General Dental Council. (2021). Mental health and wellbeing in dentistry: A rapid evidence assessment. GDC. https://www.gdc-uk.org/about-us/what-we-do/research/our-research-library/detail/report/mental-health-and-wellbeing-in-dentistry-a-rapid-evidence-assessment
[5] World Health Organization. (2019, May 28). Burn-out an occupational phenomenon: International Classification of Diseases. WHO. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases
[6] Hodkinson, A., Zhou, A., Johnson, J., Geraghty, K., Riley, R., Zhou, A., Panagopoulou, E., Chew-Graham, C. A., Peters, D., Esmail, A., & Panagioti, M. (2022). Associations of physician burnout with career engagement and quality of patient care: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ, 378, e070442. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2022-070442
[7] Dental Protection. (2019). Breaking the burnout cycle: keeping dentists and patients safe. Medical Protection Society Limited. https://www.dentalprotection.org/docs/dentalprotectioninternationallibraries/dpl-publications/ireland/1907310561-ire-dp-burnout-policy-paper.pdf
[8] Evans, D., Mills, I., Burns, L., Bryce, M., & Witton, R. (2023). The dental workforce recruitment and retention crisis in the UK. British Dental Journal, 234(8), 573–577. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-023-5737-5
[9] Cameron, J., Hannon, L., Keeton, R., McMullan, R., Nayee, S., O’Connor, R., Shirlaw, P., & White, S. (2021). New mental health and wellbeing resource for the dental team launched. British Dental Journal, 230(3), 120. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-021-2685-9
[10] Plessas, A., Paisi, M., Bryce, M., Burns, L., O’Brien, T., Witton, R., & Hanoch, Y. (2022). Mental health and wellbeing interventions in the dental sector: a systematic review. Evidence-Based Dentistry, 23(4), 90–98. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41432-022-0831-0
[11] Hallett, G., Witton, R., & Mills, I. (2022). A survey of mental wellbeing and stress among dental therapists and hygienists in South West England. British Dental Journal. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-022-5357-5