Canadian Dental Schools, canadian dental exam for foreign trained but us certified dentist
My husband went to dental school in S.Korea where he worked as a
dentist for 12 years, then took the california board exams, passed
those a couple years ago and has been working in L.A. since. He has a
California dental license. He would like to take the Canadian dental
exam so we can move to canada (my home) but in all my research I cannot
find a loophole for him to take the exam and forego the 2 years of
school required for foreign dentists. If he has an american dental
license does he really need to do 2 years of school or is there a way
out of this?? School is not an option for us. Someone once said on here
that Ontario will let you take just the exam, any truth to this??
I'm sorry that the government of California led your husband to believe
that he had fulfilled the requirements to practice dentistry in North
America. To the best of my knowledge, only California, among all the 50
states and all the provinces of Canada, allowed dentists to become
licensed without a fully accredited education. That loophole is finally
being closed due to legislation passed in 1998, so he can regard
himself as lucky that he got in before a full education will once again
be required for dental licensure.
By lowering its educational standards for dental licensure a number of
years ago, the state government lured several thousand foreign-trained
dentists to California. The state's intention was to flood the dental
market and drive down costs to the state in its underfunded Medicaid
and other state dental programs.
This approach backfired. With so many new dentists in the state, there
was a shortage of paying patients, who provided the profits that
dentists need to support their unprofitable Medicaid patients. As a
result, even the foreign-trained dentists found it financially
necessary to concentrate on cosmetic and other high-profit dental
treatment, shunning the poorly-funded state-supported patients that
they were brought here to treat.
No other state, as far as I know, is willing to lower its educational
standards just to accomodate a political experiment that failed here in
California. If anything, the current trends for consumer protection
will result in even more continuing education and other requirements
for licensure.
There are over sixty licensing jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada. It
is possible that one of them may provide an educational loophole at
some future time, so the only way to find out will be for you to
contact each of them. For Canada specifically, try this site:
http://tinyurl.com/6sdnj
Hi there, My husband went to dental school in S.Korea where he worked
as a dentist for 12 years, then took the california board exams, passed
those a couple years ago and has been working in L.A. Since. He has a
California dental license. He would like to take the Canadian dental
exam so we can move to canada (my home) but in all my research I cannot
find a loophole for him to take the exam and forego the 2 years of
school required for foreign dentists. If he has an american dental
license does he really need to do 2 years of school or is there a way
out of this? School is not an option for us. Someone once said on here
that Ontario will let you take just the exam, any truth to this?