Dargaville residents will no longer have to resort to home dentistry, with a dentist being assessed to work in the Northland town thanks to the efforts of a local couple.
Julie and Rodney Cotton bought the town's only dental practice in February and went to the Philippines to recruit a dentist willing to move to New Zealand to work.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, Rodney Cotton said getting that person qualified to work in New Zealand had been slow-going after the Dental Council said he would have to resit exams with an estimated time frame of two to three years.
"I've been very lucky the Dental Council CEO personally contacted me, and she pointed out that we could do another method pathway which is called individual assessment," he told Breakfast.
An individual assessment allows the person to sit an examination and apply to have their overseas, non-prescribed qualifications, training and experience assessed. It can be a much faster option.
"I've got my fingers crossed that it is the real deal, and we can get him ticked off and in six months approximately he can be practising in Dargaville," Cotton said.
The couple had been trying since July to bring a dentist in the Northland town, which has a population of 5000.
"Dargaville's lacking GPs, it's lacking dentists, it's just general lack of every health professional you can imagine and it's becoming a regional-wide problem."
The Dental Council's chief executive Marie MacKay said in a statement that some pathways to registration in New Zealand "can be faster than others" but this is highly dependable on the individual applicant circumstances.
She said their responsibility is to protect the health and safety of members of the public, which means the process cannot be compromised to "fast track" applicants.
"This requires the necessary due diligence when considering registration applications to ensure the applicant, through their qualifications (and if required case examples), is competent and fit to practise in New Zealand, which cannot be compromised in the interest of time," MacKay said.
"We will continue to work closely with Julie and Rodney to support their understanding of registration pathways and opportunities."
Cotton agreed the six-month time frame seemed fair and said: "The last thing I want to bring to Dargaville is an incompetent person."
He said his long-term goal is to see if the model can work in Dargaville before looking to help other rural towns with their healthcare shortages.
"It wasn't a planned thing, it's just sort of snowballed. There's a lot of problems we see out here of people pulling their own teeth and doing self-dentistry," he said.
"It's just the start of all the problems in your health, in the mouth."
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