Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners

Maryland dentist CE requirements

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

What the board requires

• 30 hrsTotal per biennial cycle.
• 3 hrsInfection control (single 3-hour Board-approved course, every renewal cycle), counted within the total.
• 2 hrsAbuse and neglect (Maryland law); required every other renewal cycle, counts within the 30 when taken, counted within the total.
• 2 hrsProper prescribing and disposal of prescription drugs; required every other renewal cycle, counts within the 30 when taken, counted within the total.
• 2 hrsImplicit bias training (one-time; hour count UNVERIFIED - see EXTRACTION FLAGS), counted within the total.
• Min 13 hrsMinimum 13 hours completed in-person or by webinar (live attendance).
• Up to 17 hrsMaximum 17 hours of self-study (self-study is defined to include preparing/presenting table clinics, preparing lectures, and preparing articles for publication).
• RequiredCurrent CPR/BLS certification (AHA Basic Life Support for Healthcare Providers, ARC CPR for Professional Rescuers, or Board-approved equivalent); must be maintained but does not count toward the 30 CE hours (does not count toward CE hours).

Common questions

Source: Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners (https://health.maryland.gov/dental/Pages/Continuing-Education.aspx). RECONCILIATION SUMMARY (Maryland dentist CE hours requirement; governed by COMAR 10.44.22, Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners). This is an hours requirement summary reconciled from two blind extractions; it is not verified and not represented as complete. Primary source for both extractors is COMAR 10.44.22.04/.08 as published by the Library of Maryland Regulations (regs.maryland.gov), the official state administrative-code database (primary, not a third-party mirror). NOTE on staleness: the Board's own hosted COMAR PDF at health.maryland.gov shows PRE-amendment text (2-hour infection control, old subsection lettering); the current figures here are taken from the amended regs.maryland.gov text and the Board's 2025 bulletin documenting amendments effective March 3, 2025. (a) WHAT FULLY AGREES (adopted as-is): 30 total hours per 24-month biennial cycle; infection control 3 hours (up from 2, effective for 2025 renewals and thereafter); abuse and neglect 2 hours; proper prescribing and disposal of prescription drugs 2 hours; self-study capped at 17 hours; a 13-hour live/in-person floor; providers = Board-approved with ADA CERP and AGD PACE recognized (strict true, every course must be Board-approved); no carryover (maxHours 0); CPR/BLS is a maintained credential that does NOT count toward the 30 (placed in requiredCredentials, not topics); no delivery format entirely excluded (excludedFormats empty; exclusions in the reg are by SUBJECT, e.g. money management, politics, speed reading, not by delivery method). (b) WITHIN vs ADDITIVE: all four subject topics resolved to WITHIN. Board wording: 30 full hours is the total ("A licensee seeking renewal shall complete at least 30 full hours of Board-approved continuing education"), and the mandated subject courses are components counted inside that 30, not on top of it. No board text states any topic is additive to the 30. Both extractors agree on within for the three shared topics. (c) WHY FLAGGED (flagged_ambiguous, not extracted_agree): the two extractions do NOT fully agree on the numeric spine (implicit-bias topic present in B, absent in A), and multiple genuine ambiguities remain that a human must clear: the every-other-cycle cadence of two topics cannot be represented in the schema, the implicit-bias hour count is unverified, and the cycle length is not stated verbatim in COMAR 10.44.22.04. Per the decision rule any one of these forces flagged_ambiguous. Reviewer must NOT rely on this for renewal decisions without confirming against the live Board text. EXTRACTION FLAGS (every disagreement / source-quality concern a human reviewer must check): 1. IMPLICIT BIAS DISAGREEMENT (spine): Extractor B added a one-time implicit_bias topic at 2 hours; Extractor A omitted it entirely and treated cultural competency / implicit bias as OPTIONAL credit, not a mandate. Included here as oneTime true and flagged, to surface the conflict rather than drop it. Two problems: (i) B's own note admits the 2-hour value is an approximation and unverified; (ii) B's supporting quote is about an OPTIONAL combined cap ("up to a combined total of 4 CE hours for cultural competency, military culture, or implicit bias"), which is a credit ceiling, NOT proof of a mandated hour count. Maryland does have a one-time implicit-bias training requirement across health occupations, but its exact hour count and whether it counts within the 30 must be confirmed from the Board / Health Occupations Article before relying on the 2-hour figure. 2. EVERY-OTHER-CYCLE CADENCE: abuse-and-neglect (2h) and prescribing/disposal (2h) are each required only every OTHER renewal cycle, not every cycle. The schema has no every-other-cycle field, so oneTime is set false and the cadence is described in the label. In a given cycle a dentist may owe zero, one, or both depending on cycle parity. Do not read these as owed every cycle. 3. INFECTION CONTROL 2-to-3 TRANSITION: increased from 2 to 3 hours for 2025 renewals and thereafter. Board transitional relief (2025/2026/2027 bulletin) reportedly lets some dentists satisfy it with a single 2-hour course or two 1-hour courses for those renewal years. 3 hours used here as current; confirm transitional relief applicability per renewal year. 4. VOCABULARY MAPPING (both extractors, controlled-vocab limits): "abuse and neglect (Maryland law)" mapped to child_abuse (closest slug; the actual course also covers vulnerable-adult abuse). "Proper prescribing and disposal of prescription drugs" mapped to opioid_pain (closest slug; the course is broader than opioids). Slugs are approximations, not exact matches. 5. FORMAT CAP INTERPRETATION: adopted B's structure over A's. B has a direct quote for the 13-hour live floor ("a minimum of 13 hours shall be completed with attendance at in-person courses or webinars"); A only derived the floor arithmetically as 30 minus 17. B also places teaching and publication under the 17-hour self-study ceiling on the rationale that the reg defines self-study to include preparing table clinics, lectures, and articles; A did not classify teaching/publication at all. Format partition is respected (no format code appears in two caps). Confirm the exact self-study definition and that webinars count toward the 13-hour live floor. 6. CYCLE LENGTH NOT VERBATIM: the 24-month biennial cycle comes from Board guidance and the Health Occupations statute, not verbatim from COMAR 10.44.22.04. Renewal deadline is June 30; the 2025 amendment moved the completion window to July 1 through June 30 aligned with the renewal period. Confirm cycle length against the statute. 7. SOURCE QUALITY: regs.maryland.gov is the official state regulation library (treated as primary), but the Board's own hosted COMAR PDF is stale (pre-amendment). Board bulletin and quick-reference chart corroborate but their PDFs were reported as not machine-readable via fetch, so quotes rest on the regs.maryland.gov text. All citations carry verified false and must be checked against the live primary text before go-live. 8. BOARD URL: adopted B's more specific CE page (health.maryland.gov/dental/Pages/Continuing-Education.aspx) over A's generic dental landing page. 9. NOT MODELED (context, not requirements): optional credit opportunities noted by A but not modeled as required topics: cultural competency up to 4 hours, pro bono services up to 8 hours, up to 2 hours for attending Board open sessions. Records must be kept 5 years. These are the published requirements as we read them, not legal or board advice, and CEChart does not certify compliance. Confirm your requirements with Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners before you rely on them.