The Dental Council of India (DCI) has made it mandatory for students pursuing dental courses to undergo a one-year internship from this year before getting their Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) degree. The DCI's decision in this regard comes in the wake of the findings that the students completing the BDS (Bachelor of Dental Sciences) course since 2007 lack practical knowledge.

Communicating the decision to the state government of Andhra Pradesh, DCI also made it compulsory that along with the internship the students should serve a minimum period of 3 months in the rural areas as a part of their training.

With this decision, the four-year BDS course will have an additional one-year internship. Though the new rule comes into effect from this academic year (2011-12), it will be applicable for batches admitted in the 2008-09 session. But students of an earlier batch admitted in 2007-08 and now in their fifth and final year, want the internship year to apply to them as well.

According to officials of the NTR University of Health Sciences, which governs the medical and dental colleges in the state, Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has recently approved the re-introduction of a one-year rotational, compulsory and paid internship in the BDS course. Internship for BDS courses was introduced in 1992 but abolished in 2007, when the BDS degree course was made a five-year ‘complete classroom course’, without any hands-on training with patients. There were allegations that the strong private dental colleges lobby had pressurized the government to drop the internship at that time.

There are about 1,800 BDS seats in the state which are being filled up through a common admission test ‘Eamcet’ every year.