The Dental Council of Jamaica has mandated that, in order to meet international standards in dentistry, dentists practising in Jamaica as of January 2015 will need to undergo continuing professional development by completing prescribed education requirements in order to renew their practising certificates. After extensive worldwide research, it has been determined that dentists will need to complete 40 hours of continuing education credits over a two-year period.
For registration during the two-year cycle commencing April 1, 2019-March 31, 2021, the dentist should obtain the prescribed 40- hours as follows:
2019-2020 (comprising 20 CE-Credits) from the following sources
- The majority of these credits from core dental lectures,
- 10 credits from approved local general medical programmed hosted by Jamaica Medical Doctors Association, Medical Association of Jamaica, Nurses Association of Jamaica, or other entity approved by the DCJ.
- 4 mandatory continuing education credits are required from an infection control programme
- 6 mandatory continuing education credits are required from ethics/professionalism lecture.
2020-2021 (comprising 20 CE-Credits) from the following sources
- 20 credits from on-line
- Training Institutions,
- Professional Organizations,
- Interactive and participative webinar and/or Zoom Conferences;
- The final requirement over the two-year renewal period is that of obtaining a basic life support (BLS) license.
- Please note that NO CE credits are awarded for BLS, it is a separate requirement.
- For the dental specialist, the DCJ strongly recommends obtaining at least 80% of those credits from one’s area of speciality.
Exceptions
- Full-time lecturers at local dental institutions will not be required to have 40 hours continuing education credits but will be required to obtain the requirements for infection control and ethics, as well as completing BLS.
- For non-full time lecturers and others that give lectures at accredited programs, 4 hours of continuing education credits would be awarded for each 1-hour of a lecture given. Each lecture presented may only be used once in each renewal period for claiming CE credits.
- Authors who contribute to “peer reviewed” scientific journals will receive 6 hours as primary author and 3 hours as the secondary author for each article published. The article may only be used to claim CE credits one time, even if re-published in a different journal.
- Dentists actively enrolled in full-time post-graduate programs, and not practising dentistry, will not be required meet any of the requirements for CE credits or BLS.
- Dentists actively enrolled in post-graduate programs, but still practising dentistry concurrently, will not be required to have 40 hours continuing education credits, but will be required to obtain the requirements for infection control and ethics, as well as completing BLS.
