What Is the AGD?

What does your dentist's membership to the Academy of General Dentistry mean to you?
Your dentist is a general dentist who is a member of the Academy of General Dentistry. Your dentist cares about long-term dental health for you and your family and demonstrates that concern by belonging to the Academy of General Dentistry. As one of the 36,000 general dentists in the United States and Canada who are members of the Academy, your dentist participates in an ongoing program of professional development and continuing education to remain current with advances in the profession and to provide quality patient treatment.

What is a general dentist?
The Academy of General Dentistry defines a general dentist as the primary care provider for patients in all age groups who takes responsibility for the diagnosis, treatment, management and overall coordination of services to meet patients' oral health needs.

Who belongs to the Academy of General Dentistry?
The Academy of General Dentistry is an international dental organization of 37,000 members who are dedicated to continuing dental education and to providing the patient with the best possible care.
The mission of the Academy of General Dentistry is "to serve the needs and represent the interests of general dentists and to foster their continued proficiency through quality continuing dental education in order to best serve the public."
It is the only organization that represents the interests of general dentistry exclusively. The Academy of General Dentistry promotes public awareness of dental health and recognition of the general dentist as the primary dental care provider. The Academy works to preserve the dentist-patient relationship by promoting freedom of choice.

What are the requirements to become an Academy of General Dentistry member?
To maintain membership privileges, member dentists must earn and document 75 hours of continuing dental education every three years (five years for recent graduates) and pay yearly dues.

Members are dedicated to continuing education as a means of maintaining state-of-the-art procedures and techniques. Dentistry is changing and continues to grow with new research and discovery. The dentist who is current in general dentistry is better able to offer the patient a variety of choices available in diagnosis and treatment.

What does Fellowship and Mastership mean for members?
More than 10,000 dentists have earned an Academy of General Dentistry Fellowship Award-roughly 10 percent of all general dentists. These dentists have completed 500 credit hours of continuing education and passed the Academy's Fellowship Examination. Academy Masters have achieved Fellowship and have completed an extra 600 hours of continuing education, two-thirds of which must be from hands-on courses.

Talk to your dentist
In the hustle and bustle of this busy world, your dentist can be a useful referral service. If you are moving to another city, your dentist can recommend another Academy of General Dentistry dentist to you from that area. Your dentist can also recommend member dentists for emergencies while you are traveling.

This information was compiled for you by the Academy of General Dentistry. Please photocopy this fact sheet and distribute it to your patients.

The average person brushes
* Two minutes a day
* 14 minutes a week
* 12.1 hours a year
* For 38.5 days in their lifetime
The average person should brush
* Six minutes a day
* 42 minutes a week
* 36.4 hours a year
* 122 days in their lifetime