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Things are a changing all the time. The changes in dentistry should be improving your dental results and experience. Is your dentist up to date?

CE or continuing education is the gauge you should monitor and ask about. If your dentist does 101 hours per year or more, they outdo the highest state requirement. A lot of dentists do much more. But this is about your dentist, your health and your life - not a statistic or a probability.

Surprisingly, the highest designation is held by South Dakota (100 hours). It is possibly the state that has the most difficulty in attracting dentists. Five dentists but they are very good! Sorry SD, as a guy from Iowa - I have the right to let loose once in a while.

Its neighbor to the north only registers in at 32 hours. (If you don't know which state this is, maybe your GE needs a "state" requirement.) These requirements are usually determined by some kind of state dental board.

Next, more to think about and a link with every US state's dental CE so you can interrogate your dentist effectively. You can make sure he/she is not an out of date, without a clue, waiting for the dinner bell, in the Stone Age, out of touch, pliers slinging dentistry outlaw.

I will have to look deeper into the state dental board thing, but hopefully your board is not mostly out of touch dentists and their chummy legislator buddies. The following might be examples of this relationship.

Here is the phrase that worries me: Voluntary and not mandated by state. Okay you might want to cover your eyes (and possibly mouth) if you live in one of three states with this dental CE designation. Here they are… Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Colorado.

The next step up the ladder is the state of Texas with only 12 dental CE hours per year required. The song - "Yellow Teeth of Texas" comes to mind. Notice when sung a hand usually covers their mouths. Okay, now the song "A Texas Butt Kicking" is wafting into the room.

Now that the musical portion of this program is over, lets get to the real meat of this predicament.

GRILL your dentist. If they do more than 100 hours, you are "probably" safe. If your dentist "achieves" the state requirement but does not do more, ask them why. Find out if they do some hands-on training and peer reviewed work.

Now for the after-dinner entertainment: a good video would be nice.

A few years back a dentist said to me that he did an advanced course "by watching a video tape". While this can be helpful, this was said as if real life (my mouth and yours) was some kind of 2-dimensional TV experience.

So I said, "I watch Sesame Street every day to update my word skills. Then I tune into Barney for interpersonal skill development. Mister Rogers gets a view to help with my professional wardrobe decisions". After this tirade, he pulled out his rusty pliers and tried to chase me down.

Luckily, someone does not determine my continuing exercise education without my best interests at heart.

Here is the link for dentist CE, and dental hygienist and dental assistant continuing requirements or lack thereof.

Sincerely,
RAC

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