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Emily Hung

About 60 per cent of Hong Kong’s first batch of dental graduates who underwent mandatory internship training have joined the city’s Department of Health, a move that has helped “significantly ease” the manpower crunch.
The development followed a controversial amendment to the Dentists Registration Ordinance in 2024, requiring all dental graduates in Hong Kong to complete a 12-month internship before obtaining a full licence starting in 2025. The measure aimed to enhance hands-on clinical experience in real-life settings.
Dr Kitty Hse Mei-yin, consultant-in-charge of the department’s dental services, said on Friday that the government had recruited 62 per cent, or 46 of the first batch of 75 interns.
The rest went on to work at the Prince Philip Dental Hospital’s teaching facility, at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), in non-governmental organisations or in the private sector.
“While students have learned a lot from their six-year undergraduate training, the internship allowed them to put what they learned in books into practice in the real world, meeting different kinds of patients in different roles under the support of experienced dentists,” Hse said.
“During the internship, they never know what kind of problems will be brought into the room by the next patients, which is different from their clinical training at school … that could enhance their clinical judgment and independent thinking skills.”
Under the internship, all students were rotated to four clinical settings – general and emergency dental service, public hospital, teaching hospital, and school or community dental service – with each rotation lasting for three months.
Participants were subject to ongoing assessments by veteran dentists.
After completing the internship, students were issued with a certificate of experience by the Dental Council of Hong Kong on August 31, followed by full registration the following day.
All students passed the internship, except for one who was suspended from duty in January for accessing the digital medical records of 16 patients without consent.
Hse said the department would build on the experience and continue the rotational arrangement in the future, while increasing their exposure to different specialities and their safety awareness when using the digital health record systems and social media.

In an anonymous online survey that covered about 70 per cent of dental interns in July, more than 80 per cent said they were satisfied with the internship arrangement.
Reasons cited included the constructive and prompt feedback they received from senior dentists, alongside opportunities to enhance their communication, clinical and time-management skills.
Patients also gave positive feedback to those interns.
Dr Sharon Lee Siu-man, a consultant dental surgeon at the department, said that while the purpose of the new rule was never intended to fill vacancies in the public sector, the manpower crunch had been “significantly eased”.
“We will continue to run the internship programme, ensure sufficient roles for them to complete the internship, and that is not related to our manpower situation at all.”
HKU, the city’s sole dental school, supplies about 70 new dentists each year. But most graduates tend to join the private sector, which offers better pay and hours.
Health authorities earlier predicted that Hong Kong would be short of 180 dentists by 2030 and 120 by 2035, before seeing a surplus of 20 by 2040.
Dr Jason Yip, a graduate who just completed the internship and joined the department as a dental officer, said the undergraduate training had already equipped graduates with certain skills.
“Throughout the six years of studies, we started clinical internship by the end of year two, and many more treatments were performed in the third year … we needed to meet a certain number of [teeth treated] to graduate in the first place,” he said.
Yip added that the internship taught him that being a dentist was not just about performing treatments, but also “perfecting the details”.
He recalled an elderly lady with acute tooth pain who requested removable dentures, but wished to keep them discreet so people around her would not know.
He struggled to find a solution until a veteran specialist guided him, and the patient was happy with the result.


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Hong Kong

Health & Environment

A consultant dental surgeon says the 46 new recruits have helped ‘significantly ease’ department’s manpower crunch


A consultant dental surgeon says the 46 new recruits have helped ‘significantly ease’ department’s manpower crunch.


Over 60% of new dentists join Department of Health after mandatory internship

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A consultant dental surgeon says the 46 new recruits have helped ‘significantly ease’ department’s manpower crunch

A consultant dental surgeon says the 46 new recruits have helped ‘significantly ease’ department’s manpower crunch