Banning live patients as test subjects on licensing examinations

The use of live patients on the licensing examinations was a part of dentistry for almost the entire twentieth century and continues up until today. Considerable new debate about the appropriateness of using live patients as test subjects began in the mid-1990s and culminated in the passage of a resolution in the American Dental Association's year 2000 House of Delegates calling for an end to this practice by the year 2005. The live patient examination tests a narrow range of clinical skills, creates ethical dilemmas for candidates, for the host institution, and for the profession, and is unable to distinguish between those ready to assume independent practice from those who are not yet at that level of competence. There are other ways to test for such readiness including proposals in New York State to substitute a postdoctoral year or mannequins in place of live subjects. The public and the dental profession will be better off by developing alternative licensing tests to the use of live subjects.