Arkansas State Board of Dental Examiners

Arkansas dentist CE requirements

The published continuing-education requirements for a Arkansas dental license, laid out clearly so you can see the whole picture before your renewal.

What the board requires

• 50 hrsTotal per biennial cycle.
• 1 hrsInfection control, counted within the total.
• RequiredCurrent Healthcare Provider level CPR (BLS) course; must be held but does not count as CE hours (does not count toward CE hours).

Common questions

Source: Arkansas State Board of Dental Examiners (https://healthy.arkansas.gov/boards-commissions/boards/dental-examiners-arkansas-state-board/). RECONCILIATION SUMMARY (adversarial reconcile of Extractor A vs Extractor B for US-AR dentist CE hours requirement). (a) WHAT FULLY AGREES. A and B agree on the entire numeric spine, so every spine value below is adopted as the agreed value: cycle is 24 months, biennial (two calendar years beginning January 1 of even-numbered years); totalHours is 50 CE credit units per period, where one credit unit equals a minimum of 50 minutes; one mandatory subject topic of at least 1 hour of infection control, counted within (not on top of) the 50; no delivery-format caps and no excluded formats (the board accepts home study / self-instruction for the entire 50 hours); provider.accepts is state_approved, CERP, and PACE with strict false because the board does not pre-approve courses and does not require a specific accreditation; carryover maxHours 0 (excess hours do not roll forward); and CPR at the Healthcare Provider (BLS) level as a mandatory credential that must be current but does not count as CE hours, placed in requiredCredentials rather than topics. (b) WITHIN vs ADDITIVE RESOLUTION. The board wording "At least 1 CE hours in each 2-year reporting period must be on the subject of infection control" describes a floor inside the 50-hour total, not hours in addition to it. Resolved as counting = within. The mandated subject maps cleanly to the controlled-vocabulary slug infection_control. The board's non-qualifying items (money management, investments, time with professional or financial consultants, and professional organizational business meetings) are CONTENT/subject disqualifications, not delivery-format exclusions, so they are correctly NOT mapped to any of the 7 format codes and excludedFormats stays empty. (c) WHY FLAGGED (flagged_ambiguous, not extracted_agree). Although A and B agree on the full spine and the within/additive question is resolved, the core numeric spine (50-hour total, 1-hour infection control, CPR requirement, no-pre-approval, home-study acceptance) is sourced ONLY to the law.cornell.edu (LII) SECONDARY MIRROR of Article XIV rule 038.00.08-002. Only the no-carryover field is backed by a PRIMARY official-code URL (Code of Arkansas Rules 17 CAR 115-1406, codeofarrules.arkansas.gov); B reports the primary board section pages are JavaScript-rendered and did not return full section text on fetch. Per the reconcile rules, mirror-only sourcing of the spine forbids extracted_agree, so reviewStatus is flagged_ambiguous. All citation objects remain verified:false. verified_live is never permitted; a human operator must sign off before this state goes live. This is an hours-requirement extraction, not a verified or complete legal determination. (d) EXTRACTION FLAGS (items a human reviewer must check): 1. CORE SPINE IS MIRROR-ONLY. Verify the 50-hour total, the 1-hour infection-control floor, the CPR requirement, home-study acceptance, and no-pre-approval against the PRIMARY board rule text (codeofarrules.arkansas.gov, Title 17 / 17 CAR, formerly Secretary of State Agency 038, Article XIV). The primary section pages are JS-rendered and did not return full text on automated fetch. 2. MIRROR URL MISMATCH. A cites the LII path .../regulations/arkansas/038-00-08-Ark-Code-R-002 while B cites .../038-00-08-Ark-Code-R-SS-002 (SS = section symbol). Confirm which LII path is live and correct; this doc adopted the shorter A-form URL for the mirror-sourced fields. 3. CPR ZERO-HOUR ASSUMPTION. Both extractors agree CPR/BLS is required but assigns no CE-hour value; the rule text does not attach an hour count. Confirm CPR is genuinely a zero-hour credential and not a hidden hour bucket. Credential type recorded as cpr_bls (A used cpr_bls, B used cpr; harmonized to cpr_bls). 4. OPIOID / CONTROLLED-SUBSTANCE. Neither extractor found an Arkansas board CE mandate on opioids or controlled substances. The 8-hour substance-use-disorder training reported by third-party CE aggregators is the FEDERAL MATE Act one-time requirement tied to DEA registration/renewal, not an Arkansas board CE-cycle topic, and is deliberately excluded from topics. Confirm no separate AR board opioid CE rule exists. 5. BOARD ORG / CITATION LINEAGE. The board now sits under the Arkansas Department of Health (Title 17), formerly Secretary of State Agency 038. Confirm the current authoritative rule citation and that Article XIV rule 038.00.08-002 remains the operative CE rule. 6. REPORTING-PERIOD CADENCE. Biennial period stated as two calendar years beginning January 1 of even-numbered years, with three-year record retention and end-of-period audit (per B); confirm against primary text. These are the published requirements as we read them, not legal or board advice, and CEChart does not certify compliance. Confirm your requirements with Arkansas State Board of Dental Examiners before you rely on them.