“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.”-Mark Twain
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When books become your companion yet again!!
Membership exams are conducted by the royal colleges so you can become its member. It is a 2 part exam - one theory and one OSCE (mostly) type of examination and proving your knowledge base of basics in dentistry. It is not a course or nor can it be considered as a master as the questions are what we should know as a general dentist in a hospital or clinical setting. MFDS is more in a hospital-based and max-fax based, surgical questions, and MJDF (was a joint faculty so both hospital and clinical combined exam) but I hear this will be discontinued soon, with 2021 being the last few exams.
You can do these exams from different centre around the world. There is also a reason to get a visit visa and come and explore UK, make some contacts, visit a few places and see if you like it here.
These post-nominals, are needed / help when you apply for jobs or for masters programs, but there is a yearly fee to use these post-nominals (basically for as long as your career, do bear this in mind!) .I completed MJDF in 2008 and I was an examiner for the MJDF exam for almost 8 years. I usually supervised the OSCE part of the exam and it was a great learning opportunity for me.
All the colleges have courses for the different exams all through the year and you can check for details of dates and cost on the respective royal college websites.
According to reports, the MJDF (Membership of Joint Faculty) is going to be discontinued and replaced with MFDS (Membership of Faculty of Dental Surgery) by the royal colleges and maybe another exam by the FGDP(UK), It was the MFGDP (Membership of Faculty of General Dental Practice), which was how it was in the past.
As of now, there are mainly 2 membership exams for a general dentist.
MFDS -Membership of the faculty of dental surgery
This is conducted by the 3 different colleges.
It is a 2 part exam
It gives you membership to the Royal College, which can be used as a post-nominal after your name in addition to your degree.
This is valid in any part of the world.
You will have to pay a sum of £340 /annum for a dentist in the UK and Ireland and £150/annum for international.
You will need to keep paying this retention fee to be eligible to use the post-nominal addition to your degree.
Part 1 -Written examination testing the range of knowledge and understanding that underpins direct patient care. It is a three-hour examination comprising of 200 Single Best Answer (SBA) questions.
Part 2 - is an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), The examination normally lasts around two hours, and consists of 10 stations which are examined plus a number of rest stations.
Candidates will normally be allowed a maximum of five years in which to complete all parts but will need to pass Part 1 before progressing to Part 2.
Some guidance about this exam -
MJDF -Membership of joint faculty
This is conducted by these 3 colleges.
It is a 2 part exam
It gives you membership to the Royal College, which can be used as a post-nominal after your name in addition to your degree.
This is valid in any part of the world.
You will have to pay a sum of £340 /annum for a dentist in the UK and Ireland and £150/annum for international.
You will need to keep paying this retention fee to be eligible to use the post-nominal addition to your degree.
Part 1 - is held at least twice a year. It consists of one paper, based on the foundation training curriculum, assessing knowledge and applied knowledge. This will include different formats of multiple-choice questions.
Part 2 - is an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), The exam usually lasts around 3 hrs. It consists of a structured professional skills assessment, comprising 18 stations and will test candidates’ communication skills, clinical competence and clinical reasoning.
Candidates will normally be allowed a maximum of five years in which to complete all parts but will need to pass Part 1 before progressing to Part 2.
Some guidance about this exam -
RCS Eng
Sample questions