I am working on my continuing education hours and I discovered this on the Tennessee Board of Dentistry website. “Five (5) hours of continuing education credit shall be granted for attendance at a state, regional or national dental meeting. A maximum of ten (10) continuing education credits may be earned in this category during the continuing education cycle that precedes the licensure or registration renewal year. These hours are in addition to any continuing education courses attended at any of those meetings.”
I wanted to see if I was understanding it correctly. Does this mean just attending one of those meetings gives you 5 credit hours? And that you can attend up to two for credit per 2 year cycle? If so, how do you receive that credit, does the CE certificates from classes taken automatically apply this extra credit?
I called the Tennessee Board of Dentistry on your behalf and they were extremely helpful in clarifying this. The Board Representative said:
Each licensure cycle you can receive 10 credit hours for attending a conference in addition to the CEs you earn by taking classes. Of course you can attend more conferences than that, but can use the attendance of 2 for up to 10 attendance CEs. The conferences that qualify are, for instance, the TDA (state conference) and the Hinman Dental Meeting (national conference). The TDA does give an attendance form, but many conferences (like the Hinman) don’t. For those, when you renew your license and the Board sees you took classes at the Hinman, they will automatically give you the 5 CE credits for attending.
While I was impatiently waiting for a call back from the Tennessee Board, I reached out to hygienist and founder/owner of CE Zoom, Sarah Thiel, for clarification too. She knows state CE requirements like no one else. She verified what the representative at the Board told me. Speaking of CE Zoom, I highly recommend using it to log your CEs. It tells you exactly what you need and keeps everything organized and logged in one spot.
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Thank you so much! I'll definitely be looking into CE Zoom!! :)
kellypayne
You are most welcome! Don't hesitate to contact the Board for specific questions like this. They make the rules, so they are the ones with the best answers!
Kara RDH