Dental students choosing licensure path give more consideration to career flexibility rather than ethical dilemmas

Although a patient-based clinical licensure examination (CLE) has been used in the United States for many decades to evaluate an individual's competency to practice dentistry, there continue to be validity, reliability, and ethical issues of concern to the profession. As a result of a 2009 decision by the Minnesota Board of Dentistry, dental students from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, beginning with the Class of 2010, are eligible for initial licensure in Minnesota by passing the nonpatient-based National Dental Examining Board of Canada Examination. Surveys were distributed to 101 senior dental students to assess what factors students used to decide whether or not to register for a patient-based CLE. The response rate to the survey was 84.2% (85/101). The opportunity to apply for a license in multiple states after passing a patient-based CLE was the primary factor in influencing the students to register for a patient-based CLE. Regarding the use of live patients in a CLE, students were most concerned with having to operatively restore teeth that could be treated more conservatively and for other reasons outside of their control, such as the patient failing to show up, patient not being accepted by the examiners, and procedural issues during the examination.