How to become a dentist in Canada as a international student? How many years does it take to become one after 12th medical?
There are 3 different primary pathways by which you can practise Dentistry in Canada as an international student.
Graduation from an accredited Dental College :-
- If you have graduated from an accredited dental college then you can directly apply for the NDEB Examination. NDEB is an organization which intends to grants provisional license to the dentists who wish to practise dentistry in Canada. ( However, if you had graduated from a college before it was accredited will not make you eligible for direct application to NDEB. In that case you have to follow the third pathway which I will be telling you later. )
- You then have to appear for the NDEB (National Dental Examining Board of Canada's Certification Process) written exam and OSCE (Objective Structural Clinical Examination). OSCE is an exam to assess your clinical skills.
- After passing the NDEB exam you will be texting your NDEB certification. However, the NDEB will not guarantee you a licensure.
- The provisional certification will be authorised by the DRAs (Dental Regulatory Authorities) who will again require some additional certificates before they provide you with the license.
Graduation from a non-accredited dental college with general dentistry :-
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Firstly, you have to apply for an NDEB Equivalence Exam or any other Qualifying Exam.
- Once you pass that exam, you will have to give an Assessment of Fundamental Knowledge exam.
- Passing this will bring you to the application for ACJ (Assessment of Clinical Judgement) and ACS(Assessment of Clinical Skill) Exam or Degree Completion Program (for familiarizing the international students with the dentistry procedures in Canada). Choosing for ACJ+ACS will make you a direct transfer from the equivalence exams but the Degree Completion Program will have to be applied to.
- Then you will be eligible for NDEB written exam and OSCE, NDEB Certification and provisional license (same as above).
Graduation from a non-accredited college but with dental speciality (with speciality in 1 lit of 9 specialities recognized in Canada) :-
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You will firstly have to apply for the DSCKE (Dental Speciality Core Knowledge Skills) exam. The exam will automatically generate the results to the DSATP (Dental Speciality Assessment and Training Program).
- DSATP has very few number of seats and is undertaken by an university training program duration of which will vary between 3 to 12 months and will test whether you have equivalent skills to a student graduating from an accredited dental college. This presently takes place in three Universities - University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta.
- After successfully passing your DSATP, you can now apply for the NDEB-RCDC (Royal College of Dentists of Canada) exam.
You can choose any of these three pathways depending on the college that you are graduating from. However, the duration after which you can actually practice dentistry in Canada will be approximately 2 years.
Feel free to ask any more questions. Thank you.
Dear aspirant....!
Let me explain. There are two ways to become a dentist in Canada