General comments on continuing education.

Abstract

Dental education should be a continuing process from undergraduate days throughout the dentists' practising life. The development of postgraduate courses has moved earlier the point at which a licence to practise is conferred, and in so doing has increased the responsibility to pursue continuing education and training after licensure. There is a growing tendency for attendance at continuing education courses to become a condition for relicensure in the hope that this will increase the status of the profession and improve the standard of dental care. So long as the requirement is for the attendance at courses this development deserves support. However any suggestion of re-examination should be resisted since this could only lead to increased stress on the competent dentist who was a poor examinee. A questionnaire sent to dental educators produced information on the proportion of dentists currently attending continuing education courses in ten countries and also enabled the popularity of different subjects to be assessed. It is suggested that courses should be arranged so that the whole field of dentistry is covered every five years. If the profession does not organize its own programme of continuing education and motivate its members to participate voluntarily in such courses, governments may well impose upon it requirements which could be less acceptable to the status and dignity of the profession.