Continuing education credit hours taken by general practice dentists

Abstract

One of the goals of continuing education (CE) is to enhance lifelong learning; however, little has been reported to relate the extent of credit hours by dentists with demographic and practice characteristics. Ohio, like most other states, has a mandatory CE requirement for dentist relicensure. From a random sample audit, 753 Ohio dentists submitted CE credit hours earned for the biennium, 1992–1993. This information was merged with selected demographic, educational, and practice characteristics from the American Dental Directory. Of the 507 private practice general dentists audited, 79.7% are American Dental Association (ADA) members and 93.7% are males. The mean number of courses and credit hours earned is 10.3 (SD = 5.4) and 56.3 (SD = 26.6), respectively. Forty-two percent of the dentists took at least one course from a dental school and 69.6% took at least one course from a local dental society during the biennium. Using a general linear regression model, only the predictor variable of ADA membership is a statistically significant predictor of the total number (natural logarithm) of course hours taken for Ohio general dentists (R2 = 0.092, df = 20, p = 0.0005). Using age in a linear and quadratic form, we found that the number of credit hours taken by general dentists rises with age until approximately 54 years of age.