NMDA Journal Fall 2020

adopted. Testing agencies now give their exams well out- side their “regions” so that graduates can access a test uti- lized in the state in which they want to practice closer to their school. Examiners no longer need to be current board members, so some current board members do little or no examining while many former members participate as examiners. The Great Debate The more fervent debate about licensing mobility and eth- ics has been going on for about two decades. Simplisti- cally, it has become a feud between the dental examiners and the dental education community. The reality is that the battle lines were being drawn over a much longer period and have as much to do with regional interests and state-federal sovereignty, as anything else. There are also more insidious motivations that linger below the surface but are hard to ignore like the desire to control the number, race, and gender of practitioners.  continued from page 14 License to Disagree 16 New Mexico Dental Journal, Fall 2020 continues on page 18  The ADA has had policy to eliminate live patient exams since the mid-aughts. Policy to support credentialing and reciprocity is 20 years older. Member dentists have urged the ADA to be more proactive in licensing. Each time they have initiated efforts in this regard there has been signifi- cant protest from the states and the examining commu- nity. Utilizing the National Coalition to Modernize Dental Licensing allows them to be active in states over the objec- tions of the state associations. What is “Modern Licensing?” Eliminating live-patient exams is certainly one aspect, but there ultimately is amovement to create a national universal examination procedure. The leading contender is the Den- tal Licensure Objective Structured Clinical Examination (DLOSCE). It is described: The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is an assessment method based on a student's performance that measures their clinical competence.