An analysis of the effects of place of childhood, undergraduate and postgraduate education upon the regional distribution of specialist orthodontic practitioners.

In 1989, a survey of specialist orthodontic practitioners was carried out. Questionnaires were sent to all members of the British Association of Orthodontists who were engaged in full-time specialist practice. This yielded a response rate of 72%. One part of the questionnaire was directed towards details concerned with the practitioner's place of childhood, undergraduate and postgraduate education. The regions in the UK were grouped into two large areas of the 'north' and the 'south'. It was evident that most of the practitioners had received their orthodontic training in the 'south' of England and were employed within the same region. Detailed data analysis was carried out using the Mantel-Haenszel chi-squared test. This revealed that there was a strong association between the place of postgraduate orthodontic training and place of employment of the specialist practitioner (chi 2 = 48.6, P less than 0.00001). The data suggest that one method of reducing the present unequal distribution of the specialist orthodontic practitioner would be to increase the number of postgraduate training places in those regions with low levels of orthodontic manpower.