Dental Hygiene Competencies

The Federation of Dental Hygiene Regulators of Canada™ (FDHRC™) published the Entry-to-Practice Canadian Competencies for Dental Hygienists in November 2021.

The project was launched in December 2019 with the goal of developing a single up-to-date set of national entry-to-practice competencies for dental hygienists, building from those developed in 2010 by the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association. As such, the competencies are an updated set of the 2010 version rather than a complete re-write of the original publication.

The FDHRC™ worked collaboratively with consultants from CamProf Inc. on this project which involved a wide variety of stakeholders and dental hygienists from across Canada. Regulators, educators, representatives from the National Dental Hygiene Certification Board™ (NDHCB™), the Commission on Dental Accreditation of Canada (CDAC), and the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association (CDHA) were all involved in the project.

It is the FDHRC’s™ goal that the new competencies will be used across Canada for a wide variety of purposes, including:

• designing educational dental hygiene programs, accreditation, examinations/assessments, and continuing professional development offerings;
• regulating dental hygienists at entry-to-practice, re-entry, and continuing competence; and
• comparing dental hygiene credentials, including internationally.

The FDHRC™ is working collaboratively with all the stakeholders who will be implementing the new competencies. Two committees have been formed to support the implementation: the Competency Implementation Advisory Committee and the Education Advisory Committee.