Short answer: For the DHA exam for dentists, plan around your own dental disciplines plus supporting topics such as medical emergencies, medicines, infection control, ethics and radiation safety. This four-week plan gives each week a theme and a review step. DHA's guideline lists General Dentist at 150 questions in 3 hours and a 60 percent pass score, so check the current guideline for your title.
What we can and cannot say about the DHA exam for dentists
Meddex is independent and is not connected to the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) or Prometric. DHA's CBT guideline (September 2026) lists General Dentist at 150 multiple-choice questions in 3 hours, including registration time, with a 60 percent pass score and twelve content areas with no weights. Specialist dentists are 60 percent (Implantology 65) and consultants are 100 questions at 70 percent. The content list is mostly dental discipline content such as restorative dentistry, endodontics, oral surgery, periodontics and orthodontics. So treat the supporting topics below as a sensible extra layer, not as the whole exam. Everything below is a study plan, not a statement of the exam’s rules. Read the current DHA guideline for your title first. The older guide on the DHA exam for dentists explains the balance between dentistry and shared topics.
What to use for practice
Meddex full-length mock exams are built for nurses and physicians, where the question pools are large enough. For dentistry, use your own textbooks for discipline content. Use the question bank filters to see which shared-topic questions are available for your role, and treat the rest of your practice as self-made.
Week 1: Baseline and medical emergencies
Take a short baseline test to see where you stand. Then spend the week on emergencies you might meet in a dental chair.
- Anaphylaxis, including the reaction to a local anaesthetic or latex.
- Syncope, hypoglycaemia, chest pain and asthma attacks.
- Airway obstruction and basic life support steps.
- What to document and who to call.
Week 2: Medicines and infection control
Dentists prescribe and administer medicines every day, so expect applied questions, not lists.
- Local anaesthetics: maximum doses, vasoconstrictors and cautions.
- Antibiotics and analgesics: choices, allergy and interactions.
- Anticoagulants and bleeding risk before procedures.
- Sterilisation, instrument processing, PPE and sharps injuries. See infection control revision.
Week 3: Your discipline and radiation safety
This is the main week for your clinical area: diagnosis, treatment planning and complications in the fields you practise, such as restorative dentistry, endodontics, oral surgery, periodontics and orthodontics. Because DHA's own list is mostly dental disciplines, also give them one short set on each of the other days. Add radiation safety and imaging principles, such as when an image is justified and how to keep exposure low. Do mixed timed sets of about twenty questions to keep your pace.
Week 4: Ethics, mixed sets and review
Cover consent, confidentiality, record keeping and patient complaints. Then switch to mixed sets, because the real paper will not arrive sorted by topic. Spend half of each session reviewing mistakes in an error log. Keep the last two days for light review and rest.
Adjusting the plan
If you have been out of clinical practice, or you trained abroad with different guidelines, stretch the plan to six or eight weeks and repeat week 1 and 2 at the end. The guide to how long to prepare helps you decide.
A weekly self-check
At the end of each week, answer ten fresh questions on that week’s theme without notes and score yourself honestly. If you miss more than a few, repeat the theme for two more days before moving on. Write down the three facts you most often forget and read them aloud on the last evening. This takes less than half an hour and shows you whether the plan is working before the weeks run out.
Keeping the shared topics alive
Dentists often drift back to their own discipline because it feels comfortable. Put a shared-topic set at the start of every session, when you are fresh, and give your discipline the later slot. Keep a short list of the medicines and emergency steps you hesitate over, and read it before you start each day.
A worked example of one medical emergency question type
Example, written by Meddex. During a routine extraction, a patient becomes pale, sweaty and says they feel faint. They are still conscious. A sensible first response is to stop the procedure, lay the patient flat, raise the legs, check breathing and pulse, and call for help if they do not recover quickly. Notice what the answer does: it removes the cause, positions the patient and checks the basics before any drug is considered.
Practise the same pattern for other events: stop, position, assess, call, then treat. In a stem, the option that follows this order is usually the best one.
If you searched for this in other words
Dentists look for the DHA dental exam, the DHA dentist licensing exam, the DHA exam for dentists in Dubai or a DHA dental practice test. They all lead back to the same step: confirm what is on the current DHA guideline for your title, then plan your weeks around it.
Related guide
For the official titles and content areas for dentists, see DHA exam for dentists.
Frequently asked questions
This article is general educational guidance, not official advice. Exam rules, fees and timelines are set by the Dubai Health Authority and the test provider and can change, so always confirm the latest details on their official channels.
Last updated .