Every dental division · Dental Board of Australia
Ask a dento-legal adviser where dental complaints begin and the answer is usually a conversation: a treatment plan that was not fully explained, an invoice larger than the quote, a result that looked different in the photos. Whether you are a dentist, a prosthetist, a hygienist or one of the therapist divisions, these courses tackle that ethical side of the job.
The dental register
In 2024/25 the Dental Board's register held 28,406 practitioners spread over five divisions. A single Code of conduct governs every one of them (in force from 29 June 2022), as does one set of scope of practice guidelines. The difference lies in the work each division is educated and competent to perform.
| Division | Share of the register | Ethical questions that come up most |
|---|---|---|
| Dentist | 74.4% | Plans and quotes, financial consent, marketing |
| Oral health therapist | 12.5% | Working inside scope, team practice, consent involving children and parents |
| Dental hygienist | 7.0% | Scope and referral, pressure to sell products or extra services |
| Dental prosthetist | 4.6% | Quotes and fees, records, dealing directly with patients |
| Dental therapist | 3.7% | Scope, consent for children, school and public clinics |
Percentages from the Dental Board annual summary 2024/25. The total exceeds 100% because 1.9% of practitioners are registered in more than one division.
Watch
CPD registration standard
The Board has reset its cycle dates, so it is worth confirming which cycle you are in. The present three-year cycle opened on 1 December 2025 and closes on 30 November 2028. The CPD registration standard, in force since 1 December 2015, sets a floor of 60 hours over each cycle.
The Board's CPD guidelines then add a condition: 80% of the minimum, which is 48 hours, has to be clinically or scientifically based. Practice management and dento-legal courses are given as examples of learning outside that share. In practice, ethics and professionalism learning usually lands in the remaining portion, up to 12 hours a cycle if you complete exactly 60, so give it a deliberate place in your plan instead of squeezing it into late 2028.
Each annual renewal also asks about your CPR training. If you are audited, the Board may request your logbook and evidence of participation. File the Probity Courses certificate in that logbook and record the time you actually spend. The Board's rules are set out on its CPD page.
Revised CPD and recency standards are in draft
A joint consultation by Ahpra and 14 Boards, the Dental Board among them, sought views on draft recency and CPD standards until 17 July 2026. The 2015 standards and the current cycle remain in place until a revised standard commences.
Dental Board figures, 2024/25
Across all professions, 1.7% of registrants had a notification in 2024/25; dental practitioners sat well above that. The nature of the work explains much of it: treatment is often elective and costly, and patients can see the result every time they look in a mirror.
Plenty of dental complaints labelled clinical care started life as an argument about money. Picture a patient who agreed to a crown and then received a bill that also listed a build-up, a temporary crown and an extra visit no one had raised. Informed consent includes informed financial consent, which means a written estimate, an honest explanation of what might change and a new discussion when something does.
Commercial pressure has also become a regulatory subject of its own. The interim guidance on financial or commercial conflicts of interest, issued nationally in September 2026 and listed by the Dental Board, is blunt. Treatment must not be recommended because it earns money; employers must not impose targets that override patients' interests; and each patient must be told about a relevant interest personally, because a sign in reception does not count.
Two further documents matter for many practices. If your practice offers injectables, the non-surgical cosmetic procedure guidelines have bound you since 2 September 2025. Testimonials and before-and-after photographs remain subject to the advertising guidelines.
Scenarios
Composites invented for this page; none is a real case.
A patient signs off on a written estimate for two crowns. Partway through preparation the dentist finds decay beneath an old restoration and adds a core build-up without pausing to discuss the extra cost. Afterwards the patient complains on three fronts: the care, the invoice and the sense of having had no real choice while reclined in the chair.
The practice account shares before-and-after veneer photos with enthusiastic patient comments underneath, and one photo has had its lighting adjusted. Both features breach the advertising rules in the National Law: clinical testimonials are prohibited, and so is imagery likely to mislead.
A hygienist's employer introduces monthly targets for whitening kits and premium toothpaste. She does not want to push products on patients who have no need for them. The 2026 interim guidance addresses exactly this kind of target, for her and for the employer.
An oral health therapist talks a parent through fissure sealants for their 12-year-old in the waiting room, then treats the child. The record reads only 'FS 36, 46'. Months later the parent denies consenting, and nothing in the chart can show otherwise.
Written for dental practitioners
Take the two dental courses first. Most dental practitioners then add the consent course, because fee and consent disputes sit behind so many complaints.
How ethical principles shape dental decisions about options, younger patients, fees and privacy.
Professional standards for the whole dental team: scope, referral, teamwork, records and staying current.
Explaining options, risks and costs, and getting genuine agreement before the work and the bill change.
Linked to the scenarios
Testimonials, before-and-after images and claims under the advertising guidelines.
Ethics, consent and advertising for cosmetic procedures including injectables.
Dental notes that record findings, consent and reasoning.
Practice and personal social media, reviews and images.
Fees, targets, billing and conflicts of interest.
Honest conversations after an unexpected result.
Records, photographs and privacy at the front desk.
Program
Apart from clinical care itself, communication drives more dental complaints than anything else. This program gathers the four courses that deal with it.
Includes 4 courses
A$876 is the sum of the four course prices (three at A$189 and one at A$309). No discount is applied or implied.
Course sets for dental practitioners
Each set places the listed courses in your cart together. You pay the normal price of each course, and the cart shows the total before you pay.
The two dental courses on their own, for routine CPD in this cycle.
Total for 2 courses A$378
For fee disputes, upselling concerns or marketing questions.
Total for 4 courses A$996
For a live notification: the process, insight, reflection and remediation, with the dental professionalism course.
Total for 5 courses A$945
After a notification
Check which body is managing it. That will be Ahpra, the Dental Council of NSW or, in Queensland, the Office of the Health Ombudsman.
Do this before you reply and before offering any refund or goodwill gesture.
Notes, radiographs, photographs, estimates and correspondence. Do not alter a single entry.
Write the account in three parts: events, lessons, changes.
A certificate shows completion; a revised consent form or a records audit shows change. Keep both.
The limits of a certificate
Courses are educational and a certificate confirms the learning was completed. Its weight in any regulatory process is assessed by the decision-maker, with input from you and your adviser, and the result is never decided by a course. Where conditions call for education, check first whether the Board needs to agree to the course.
NSW and Queensland
Complaints about NSW dental practitioners are handled by the Dental Council of NSW in partnership with the Health Care Complaints Commission. Queensland complaints go first to the Office of the Health Ombudsman, which consults Ahpra before deciding whether the Dental Board takes the matter. Wherever you work, the code, the guidelines and the CPD cycle are national.
How the courses work
The Dental Board of Australia, together with Ahpra, regulates all five dental divisions.
Support for dental practitioners
Dental Practitioner Support provides confidential health and wellbeing help to dental practitioners and students, separate from anything the Board is doing.
Related
Generally no. The guidelines treat practice management and dento-legal learning as outside that share, so ethics and professionalism learning usually belongs in the other 20% of your minimum hours. Check the guidelines or ask the Board if you are unsure.
The current cycle started on 1 December 2025 and finishes on 30 November 2028. The following one will run from 1 December 2028 until 30 November 2031.
Yes. One Code of conduct covers every division, the scenarios involve the whole dental team, and the courses flag where scope of practice changes what you may do.
Expect to be asked for your CPD logbook and evidence of participation. Pair each certificate with a logbook entry giving the date, the topic and the time you actually spent.
A set simply adds several relevant courses to your cart at once. Every course in it keeps its usual price and the cart totals them before checkout. Nothing is discounted.
It might, especially where consent, honesty or overservicing is in question. Many fee disagreements are settled directly or through a state health complaints body. Get advice from your insurer before replying.
Yes. The Dental Board lists both the practice guidelines and the advertising guidelines for non-surgical cosmetic procedures among its current documents. They took effect on 2 September 2025; if you offer these treatments, read both in full.
A course cannot promise that. What persuades decision-makers is insight and durable change. Targeted learning, plus evidence of what you now do differently, can form part of the picture.
Yes. Use the multi-course page to choose courses for several people, or contact us to arrange it.
Your 2025-2028 cycle
Pick a course or a set, study online and add the certificate to your CPD logbook.
Sources