Hawaii Board of Dentistry (DCCA, Professional and Vocational Licensing Division)

Hawaii dentist CE requirements

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

What the board requires

• 32 hrsTotal per biennial cycle.
• 17 hrsClinical courses directly related to oral health care and patient treatment; must comprise more than one half of the required (base) CE hours per biennium (more than 16 of 32; board FAQ states at least 17), counted within the total.
• 6 hrsEthics training, at least 3 hours per year (6 per biennium), required in addition to the base CE hours, in addition to the total.
• Up to 8 hrsComputer, correspondence, and other-media (audio or video) self-study courses capped at 8 CE hours per biennium.
• Up to 2 hrsDidactic, clinical or non-clinical oral health instructor / teaching hours capped at 2 CE hours per biennium.
• RequiredBasic Life Support for Healthcare Providers course; hands-on component, continuously current, sponsored by American Heart Association or American Red Cross (a general CPR course is not sufficient). Under Hawaii rules BLS also counts for at least 1 and no more than 4 CE hours within the base total; the hands-skill portion must be completed in person. (does not count toward CE hours).

Common questions

Source: Hawaii Board of Dentistry (DCCA, Professional and Vocational Licensing Division) (https://cca.hawaii.gov/pvl/boards/dentist/). RECONCILIATION SUMMARY (Hawaii dentist CE hours requirement; not verified or represented as complete). (a) WHAT FULLY AGREES. Both blind extractors, working from the same primary official source (Hawaii Administrative Rules Chapter 16-79, Subchapter 14, hosted as an official DCCA PDF at cca.hawaii.gov, implementing HRS 448-8.5), agree on the entire numeric spine: biennial cycle of 24 months; base of 32 CE hours per biennium for a fully-licensed general dentist; ethics of 6 hours per biennium (at least 3 per year) treated as additive; self-study cap of 8 CE hours per biennium spanning computer/correspondence/other-media, mapped to online_selfstudy + correspondence + self_instruction as a single cap (format-partition honored); providers strict, accepting state_approved + CERP + PACE (enumerated approved sponsor list); no carryover (maxHours 0); and BLS for Healthcare Providers as a must-hold-current credential. Both independently flagged the file as ambiguous. There is no numeric value conflict between A and B and no stale-mirror problem: both point at the same live primary DCCA .gov source. (b) WITHIN vs ADDITIVE. Ethics is resolved as ADDITIVE. The rule text is explicit: 16-79-144(1)(D) states, quote, "In addition to subsections (A), (B), or (C) above, after January 1, 2016, each licensee who is a dentist shall complete at least three hours of ethics training per year." Both extractors corroborated this against the board's own 2024-2025 Renewal FAQ, which publishes "38 total" for a dentist licensed before the biennium: base 32 plus additive ethics 6 equals 38. So totalHours is encoded as the 32-hour base and ethics as additive 6; a downstream consumer that wants the single all-in figure should use 38 for a fully-licensed dentist. The clinical-floor topic (clinical_general) is resolved as WITHIN: 16-79-141(a)(1) requires clinical courses to be "more than one half of the required CE hours per biennium" (more than 16 of 32, i.e. at least 17 per the FAQ), which is a floor inside the base total, not hours on top of it. It is mapped to the controlled slug "general" (closest fit for general clinical/oral-health-care CE; the vocabulary has no dedicated clinical slug). BLS may not count toward this clinical floor. (c) WHY FLAGGED. Kept flagged_ambiguous because: (1) the within-vs-additive framing of the 6 ethics hours forces one encoding (32 base + 6 additive vs a single 38 all-in with ethics "within"); both describe the identical real-world obligation but the schema cannot hold both, and the "32-vs-38" headline discrepancy will confuse a reviewer who compares totalHours to the board FAQ's published total; (2) BLS is modeled as a required credential even though Hawaii lets it count for 1-4 CE hours within the base, which is a judgment call; (3) the clinical-majority floor is a content-category requirement squeezed into the "general" slug, a closest-fit mapping, not an exact vocabulary match. (d) EXTRACTION FLAGS (human reviewer must check): - ETHICS ADDITIVE / 32-vs-38: confirm the operator wants totalHours = 32 (base) with ethics additive, yielding the board's stated 38 all-in. Board FAQ (Rev. 11-04-2025) publishes 38 total for pre-biennium licensees and 22 for first-year (16 base + 6). Verify against the current FAQ table. - MODELING DELTA A vs B (no value conflict): Extractor A encoded the clinical floor as a topic (17, within, general) and the instructor/teaching cap (2 hours, teaching); Extractor B discussed both in notes but did NOT encode them. This reconciliation ADOPTS A's fuller encoding because both are backed by the same primary rule text (16-79-141(a)(1) and 16-79-141(b)(3)) and neither contradicts B. Confirm the reviewer wants the clinical floor surfaced as a topic rather than notes-only. - CLINICAL SLUG: "general" is a closest-fit mapping for the clinical-majority floor; there is no dedicated clinical slug in the controlled vocabulary. - BLS COUNTING: BLS placed in requiredCredentials but also counts 1-4 CE hours within the base; verify this dual treatment is acceptable downstream. - TEMPORARY VIRTUAL WAIVER: both extractors note a board temporary hardship waiver accepting all CE via virtual means for the Jan 1 2024 - Dec 31 2025 biennium, which effectively suspends the 8-hour self-study cap for that cycle only; the BLS/ACLS/PALS hands-skill portion is never waivable. The durable standing rule remains the 8-hour distance cap. Confirm whether the current renewal period is still under any temporary waiver. - CONDITIONAL ACLS/PALS: required only for dentists holding general-anesthesia or moderate/deep-sedation permits (PALS for pediatric patients), per 16-79-141(a)(2)(D); NOT a universal general-dentist requirement, so excluded here. - EXCLUDED SUBJECTS (not formats): estate planning, membership, marketing, business, personal financial planning, and investments are ineligible subject matter (16-79-141(c)); these are content exclusions, not delivery-format exclusions, so excludedFormats is empty. - NO other subject mandates found: no opioid, infection-control, radiography, human-trafficking, implicit-bias, or similar specific-subject CE requirement for general dentists beyond the clinical floor and ethics. Records must be kept four years (16-79-145). - All citation objects carry verified: false. This is an hours requirement extracted from the current primary source; it is not independently verified and is not represented as complete. A human operator must sign off before this state goes live. These are the published requirements as we read them, not legal or board advice, and CEChart does not certify compliance. Confirm your requirements with Hawaii Board of Dentistry (DCCA, Professional and Vocational Licensing Division) before you rely on them.