Quality Assurance
CDSBC's Quality Assurance (QA) Program helps ensure the public is well-served by competent oral healthcare professionals.
Certified dental assistants, dental therapists, and dentists are required to take mandatory continuing education courses and fulfill continuous practice requirements.
Current QA Program
CDSBC's QA program has two main components:
- continuing education (number of credits required to hold practising certification/registration).
- continuous practice (number of practice hours required to hold practising certification/registration).
For more information about continuing education and continuous practice, click the links below.
QA Program Enhancements
CDSBC's QA program is being enhanced in order to promote career-long hands-on learning, encourage collaboration among members of dental teams and improve treatment outcomes for patients.
The background and next steps are outlined in the timeline below.
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In 2015, CDSBC’s Board tasked the QA Committee to review and update the QA program. The QA Committee then struck a working group, which engaged with stakeholders and drafted a proposed program. Consultation on the proposed program began in 2018.
Following conclusion of the consultation period, the working group reviewed feedback, made some revisions and submitted the final proposed program to the Board, which was approved in February 2021.
Although the proposed program was approved in principle, a number of significant developments have impacted B.C.’s oral healthcare sector which were not contemplated by the working group, including:
- the impending amalgamation of oral health regulators,
- modernization of the Health Professions Act relating to formal assessment and
- enhanced cultural safety and humility training.
As these developments must be considered, CDSBC has directed a joint working group to address them in the revised QA program.
Throughout 2021, the joint working group will engage and liaise with other oral health professions to research and compare existing QA programs. It will also continue to build QA resources to meet the needs of registrants while ensuring public protection.
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Contact
If you have questions about the enhanced QA program, please email ce@cdsbc.org.
