Attracting dentists to the Swedish public dental services through the organisations’ websites

TL;DR

This study explores how Swedish public dental service organizations use their websites to attract dentists by highlighting workplace culture and career opportunities.

Contribution

The study identifies how public dental service websites communicate to retain dentists through workplace belonging and career growth.

Findings

PDS organizations emphasize fostering a sense of belonging to attract dentists.

Websites highlight career development opportunities to appeal to new dental graduates.

Organizations present favorable working conditions to encourage dentist retention.

Abstract

The recruitment and retention of dentists is important for quality dental care. The Swedish public dental service (PDS) suffers from staff shortages and high turnover due to perceived unfavourable working conditions that drive dentists towards the private dental sector. Websites can be a useful recruitment tool for organisations to communicate their mission, culture, and employee benefits. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate PDS organisations’ websites to identify how they present themselves to potential employees.

The data were collected from the websites of the 21 Swedish PDS organisations in June 2024. A thematic analysis was conducted using qualitative content analysis.

The findings show that PDS organisations appealed to dentists through emphasising their commitment to (1) fostering a sense of belonging within the workplace and (2) encouraging development and career growth, which are working conditions that can persuade employees to stay at an organisation. The organisations particularly appealed to newly graduated dentists through supporting the transition to dental practice.

The PDS organisations emphasised favourable working conditions in their presentations of themselves as employers on their websites. Further research is needed on how effective the organisations’ websites are in attracting dentists and how dentists perceive the content on the websites in relation to actual workplace realities.