Dentists in Greece : Accreditation and qualifications

More than ninety per cent of all dentists in Greece are trained at one of the two dental schools in Greece located at Athens and Thessalonica, and the basic training course lasts five years.  A small number of dentists graduate in the US or the UK and need no further accreditation in Greece.  In recent years a small proportion of dentists have graduated in Eastern European countries such as Romania and are required to sit exams on all of the subjects taught in the last year of the Greek dental school in order to qualify for their dental license in Greece.

The dental license to practice is issued by the Health Services Department of the Municipal government following the accreditation of the dental degree of the dentist by the local Dental Association, such as the Athens Dental Association (Greek only site).  The national and the local dental associations (for example the Athens Dental Association), have a certain supervisory function over the practice of dentistry in Greece but the Ministry of Health, based in Athens, supervises dentistry on the national level while the municipal government does so at the local level.  Equally, the license to open a practice, a separate process from the license to practice dentistry, is issued by the Municipal government.

Dental organizations in Greece include The Hellenic Society of Periodontology, the Hellenic Dental Association which supervises the local dental associations and the Hellenic American Dental Association which is a private dentists club only.