Dentist group says practitioners are ‘sufficiently competent’ to treat patients safely, no need for more training

SINGAPORE — The Singapore Dental Association (SDA) has challenged the need for further training and certification for “higher risk” dental procedures, saying that dentists here are “sufficiently competent in their skillset to treat patients safely”.

This was in response to a recent proposal by the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Singapore Dental Council (SDC) — which is the profession’s self-regulatory body — that could require dentists in general practice to undergo more training for procedures such as wisdom teeth surgery and implants.

In a media release on Monday (May 6), the SDA, the professional body for dentists, said many of its members were “bewildered” by “the sudden need for competency training for procedures that they have been carrying out safely and effectively for generations”.

The proposal has caused unhappiness within the fraternity since news of it broke last week, with the College of General Dental Practitioners Singapore — a non-profit organisation for general dentists — saying on Saturday that the proposal could raise costs for patients and compromise their treatment.

It also pointed to a “lack of clarity and detail on the proposed policy and the absence of any compelling reasons for it”.

The SDA pointed out that dentists in Singapore already undergo a minimum of 70 hours of continuing dental education (CDE), which is among the highest level in the world. “Many of them take courses and workshops to train themselves further in advanced procedures.”

It has proposed instead to introduce any additional training to new intakes of dental students rather than all practising dentists. This would “avoid the large resources needed to train all dentists”, said the association.

Some of the suggestions by SDA include:

• Starting training with the new intake of dentistry students to avoid large resources required to further train all dentists

• Collaborating with the Faculty of Dentistry to strengthen the curriculum of future generation of dentists and evolve training in tandem with advances in technology.

• Integrate and combine the competency framework into the existing CDE programme to prevent additional “onerous” amount of training requirements on future dentists.

• Strengthen CDE courses through the accreditation of core courses as this will allow younger, less experienced dentists to receive adequate primary training and allow more experienced ones to develop advanced skills.

• If there are perceived high risk procedures that warrant MOH or SDC’s call for stricter level of training, this should be considered with proper justifications.