Dental practice licensing in Georgia is part of the general regulation of medical practice: a dentist is a holder of a medical specialty, and the right to independent practice is confirmed by the same instrument — a state certificate — rather than a separate license. The pillars of this page are Articles 4, 5, 7, 21 and 28 of the Law on Medical Practice. Foreign dental-board licensing models do not operate in the Georgian system — a dentist's path is defined by the Georgian law.
The specialty system and its elements
Under Article 4 of the Law the Ministry determines the list of medical specialties; the list of adjacent medical specialties; and the list of those medical specialties in which a subject of independent medical practice with a given disease is barred from working. Dental specialties are part of precisely this system: a dentist's qualification is established through the list of specialties, and the boundary of the right is measured by the specialty indicated in the certificate. The third list — the enumeration of contraindications — has practical weight: health-status restrictions are verified both in choosing the specialty and throughout the practice itself.
The chain of definitions and the path of preparation
The block of definitions in Article 5 names every stage of a dentist's path. Medical practice is the professional activity of a person trained in medicine, possessing the requisite skills and practical experience, whose aim is the protection, preservation and restoration of human health through the application of recognised medical standards and ethical norms. Independent medical practice is that form of the activity carried out by the holder of a state certificate, who answers personally for its results. Residency is the post-diploma stage of higher medical education pursuing professional training in one of the medical specialties on the basis of a state order — and in dental specialties private funding is admissible. This last circumstance is a significant distinction on the path to dentistry: a state-order limit cannot block that path.
The definition of a specialist physician describes the destination: a person who has completed a residency course in one of the medical specialties and has received a state certificate confirming the right to independent medical practice. Continuous professional development does not end that moment — it continues throughout the entire practice of an independent subject and pursues the maintenance of conformity between theoretical knowledge and practical skills and the achievements of modern medicine. The certificate is thus not the end of the path — it is the beginning of a continuous professional cycle.