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PODCAST

Dental As Anything

Dental As Anything is a podcast to share insights and opinions on a wide range of topics related to dentistry (and beyond), exploring critical issues that affect oral health across the community. It is a valuable resource for dental professionals and anyone interested in the intersection of dentistry, public health and wellbeing. Hosted by Matt Hopcraft, dentist & public health academic.

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All Episodes

00:23:18

Student selection and workforce maldistribution

Dental As Anything ·

2026/03/12

Seemingly neutral prerequisite subjects and admissions settings systematically disadvantage rural and low socioeconomic status students - a question of fairness that has workforce implications.Have you ever thought about how you were selected into dental school, and whether that process was the best way to select future dentists? Or perhaps more importantly, how that selection process shapes the profession and ultimately plays a role in either improving health outcomes or exacerbating inequities in

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00:26:51

Financial Dentophobia 🦷 💰

Dental As Anything ·

2026/02/27

In a country gripped by an affordability crisis, what are we doing to ensure that all Australians can access the dental care that they need?Recent news stories have shone a light on dental affordability, with many Australians flocking overseas for major dental treatment. For many Australians, dental care has quietly become a luxury — not a routine service but a decision weighed against rent, food, fuel and other essentials.They avoid the dentist not mainly because they fear the drill — although

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00:27:49

The future is now

Dental As Anything ·

2026/02/12

Discussion on the future of dentistry invariably converges on advances in technology - whether it is new materials or equipment, or the holy grail of growing a new tooth. Things that are designed to make our lives as dentists easier, simpler, faster or more profitable. And obviously deliver better outcomes to patients.One thing that they tend to have in common is that they perpetuate the treatment focus of dentistry. The future of dentistry is apparently about how we treat dental disease in new and

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00:25:13

Suicide and dental practitioners

Dental As Anything ·

2026/01/29

This podcast discusses suicide and topics that some people may find distressing. If this raises any issues for you crisis support services like Lifeline can be reached 24 hours a day on 13 11 14A new paper just published in the Journal of the American Dental Association looked at suicide mortality amongst US dentists between 1979 and 2018. It found that dentists experienced a higher suicide mortality than the general population, and that had increased since 1995.This is a tough topic to discuss, but

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00:32:47

How accurate was dental workforce modelling?

Dental As Anything ·

2026/01/15

In 2014 Health Workforce Australia (HWA) released a report on the future oral health workforce. It came amidst claims from the dental profession that we were facing an oversupply of dentists and calls to cap the number of dental schools and domestic dental graduates, as well as removing dentists from the Skilled Occupation List.The HWA report predicted a persistent workforce oversupply until at least 2025, projecting that we would have 19,624 dentists and dental specialists working clinically in

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00:37:14

Using 3D intra-oral scans to diagnose decay

Dental As Anything ·

2025/12/11

Dental caries continues to be one of the most important public health problems in Australia, and particularly for Australian children. One in three children experience tooth decay in their baby teeth by the age of 5-6 years and 40% in their adult teeth by the age of 12-14 year, and it is the leading cause of preventable hospitalisations amongst Australian children. So early detection and prevention are critically important – at both a public health and individual patient level.New research

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00:39:20

Anatomy of a Parliamentary roundtable

Dental As Anything ·

2025/11/06

Advocacy is an important part of our role in the dental profession, but often feels like a thankless task. I recently spent the day in Canberra courtesy of the Australian Dental Industry Association who hosted a parliamentary roundtable on the dental industry.This week on the Dental As Anything podcast I give you a peak behind the curtains to hopefully gain some insight into what actually happens, how oral health is viewed in Canberra and perhaps why progress isn’t as quick as we would like (but why

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01:10:29

Myth busting the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme

Dental As Anything ·

2025/10/23

With recent talk about expanding Medicare to include more dental services, it’s worth revisiting the last time that this was done with the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, which ran from 2008 to 2013. The scheme delivered nearly $2.8 billion in dental treatment, highlighting the value of the scheme in improving access for necessary dental care as well as evidence of pent-up demand. However, the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme became politicised and was controversially brought to a close in 2013 amidst

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00:34:01

Dental opioid prescribing

Dental As Anything ·

2025/10/09

Opioid prescribing by Australian dentists has increased over the past decade, although the quantity dispensed has reduced. New research highlights some concerning trends with significant implications.In this episode of the Dental As Anything podcast I speak to Associate Professor Leanne Teoh about her latest study and the implications for the dental profession. Leanne is a pharmacist, practising dentist and academic at the Melbourne Dental School.She has a strong interest in dental prescribing and

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00:17:17

Are you embarrassed by your smile?

Dental As Anything ·

2025/09/25

We make snap judgements about people based solely on their appearance, and draw negative assumptions about people with visibly poor oral health, contributing to shame, stigma and even bullying.The face is the window to the soul. Our physical appearance,particularly that of our smile, often dictates people’s first impressions of us. And first impressions flow through to behaviours – to how people treat us. And as we know, first impressions are hard to shake. That is why the dentalprofession has been

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00:22:49

ai.Revolution

Dental As Anything ·

2025/09/11

The biggest issue with artificial intelligence isn’t that it makes mistakes, it’s that it has the potential to make mistakes at scale at the same time that people are trusting it to be infallible.Technology usually progresses at a speed that outpaces existing regulation and legislation, and we are then forced to play catch up when the cat is already out of the bag. This is complicated by a tech sector that is becoming increasing powerful and transnational, making regulation more difficult.The

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00:22:39

Media coverage of early superannuation release for...

Dental As Anything ·

2025/08/28

A new study has looked at the media coverage and the implications for the dentistry, particularly in terms of societal attitudes towards dental health and the dental profession.The recent trend of dental practices promoting the use of superannuation for dental treatment has become a hot topic issue in the dental profession over the past few years. From $108 million in 2020-21 to $526 million last year, the scale of use in dentistry far exceeds the other areas where superannuation is being withdrawn

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00:30:09

The rising cost of dental education

Dental As Anything ·

2025/08/14

How much did you pay for your dental degree? Were you one of the lucky ones who received a free education? Did you come in during the early days of student fees in the early 1990s when $10,000 was enough to cover the tuition fees for dental school? Or are you a recent graduate or current student at a graduate entry school in a full fee paying place, paying more than $80,000 per year for your dental degree, on top of the twenty odd thousand dollars you paid for your undergraduate degree?As the cost

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00:28:35

The power to legislate dental services

Dental As Anything ·

2025/07/31

What does the Australian constitution say about the powers of the Commonwealth to provide dental services and what impact might that have on the dental profession in the context of expanding Medicare?Medicare and dentistry is in the news again now that the new Commonwealth parliament has commenced, with the Greens vowing to use their balance of power in the Senate to pressure the government to add dental care into Medicare.One of the common concerns from dentists about Medicare funded dentistry is

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00:21:40

Who profits from healthcare?

Dental As Anything ·

2025/07/17

Dentistry is a $12 billion a year industry and growing, making it a valuable target for private equity investment. But what are the implications for patients when others seek to profit from healthcare?A recent article in the Australian Financial Review reported large dental chain Dental Boutique had appointed Morgan Stanley and Gilbert + Tobin to sell their business. It is part of a growing trend both here in Australia and internationally for the consolidation and corporatisation of healthcare

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00:21:57

Trust me, I'm a dentist ...

Dental As Anything ·

2025/07/03

Trust is essential to the normal function of society, yet it is perhaps not something that we spend a lot of time thinking about until it’s gone. Long term data on trusted professions shows that dentists rank in the top 5 – behind nurses, doctors, pharmacists and teachers, although trust has been declining since peaking in 2017.In this episode of the Dental As Anything podcast, we discuss the important issue of trust - what it is, why it’s important and why we are seeing a gradual erosion of trust -

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00:21:06

Commercial determinants of oral health

Dental As Anything ·

2025/07/02

In this episode of the Dental as Anything podcast I talk about our new paper Oral Health Meets Commercial Determinants: An Opportunity to Bridge Individual and Structural Approaches published this week in the Australian Dental Journal with colleagues from the University of Sydney and Deakin University. We highlight the role of structural and commercial factors, operating outside an individual's control, that drive the high prevalence of oral disease and inequities at a population level, and argue

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00:22:25

Cosmetic procedures and ethics

Dental As Anything ·

2025/06/05

New guidelines on cosmetic procedures and a statement on the use of superannuation for dental treatment have again shone the light on ethical conduct and the tension between business and healthcare.In the past week Ahpra has released two guidelines and a joint statement with the Dental and Medical boards which highlight some ethical challenges facing the dental profession. They come off the back of a series of stories, and no doubt complaints and notifications, regarding cosmetic procedures and the

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00:19:51

Difficult conversations

Dental As Anything ·

2025/05/15

What do we do when a dental practitioner breaks the trust of patients? Should we discuss that within the profession? What happens when those cases are picked up by the media and talked about in the public sphere? Should we engage in the discussion or try and shut it down.In this episode of the Dental as Anything podcast I talk about the vexed issue of the early release of superannuation, over-servicing, the role of the media in reporting stories of interest, and how the dental profession should

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00:36:11

Health is political: the role of research and advocacy

Dental As Anything ·

2025/05/01

Health is inherently political . Like any resource or commodity in our neo-liberal economic system, some social groups have more of it than others. We also know that the social and commercial determinants of health – more than just individual behaviours – are amendable to political interventions.In this episode of the Dental as Anything podcast I talk about the history of expanding Medicare to include more dental services, the broader support and advocacy for schemes such as Senior Dental Benefits

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