What is in Paper A and Paper B
Last updated 9 September 2026
The split in one line. Paper A is the science underneath dentistry. Paper B is the practice of dentistry in the UK, including the rules that govern it. Each paper is three hours, and you must pass both.
Paper A — dental science and human disease
The General Dental Council lists the content of this side of the exam as:
- Anatomy
- Dental anatomy and embryology
- Physiology
- Biochemistry
- Bacteriology
- Immunology
- Pathology and human disease
- Pharmacology
- Dental materials
- Statistics
Two things about this list catch most candidates out. The first is human disease — not oral disease, human disease. Cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, haematological conditions and how they change your management of a dental patient. The second is that dental materials sits here, on the science side, rather than with the clinical subjects where instinct puts it.
Statistics is a small component but a reliable source of marks, because it is finite and learnable in a way that pathology is not.
Paper B — clinical dentistry, law and ethics, health and safety
Paper B covers the practice of dentistry: restorative work, endodontics, periodontology, prosthodontics, oral surgery, orthodontics and paediatric dentistry, radiography, and the management of patients.
Alongside that sits the material candidates most often underestimate: UK law, ethics, and health and safety. Consent, capacity, safeguarding, record-keeping, complaints handling, cross-infection control, radiation regulations, waste management.
This is the part of the exam where clinical experience helps you least. A dentist with fifteen years of practice abroad has no particular advantage on UK-specific regulation, because none of it was part of their training or their working life. It is also, being rule-based rather than judgement-based, some of the most efficiently learnable material in the whole exam.
What the split means for revision
Both papers are sat close together and both must be passed, so there is no sensible strategy that involves specialising. But the two halves reward different kinds of study.
- Paper A rewards recall. It is broad, factual, and largely a matter of whether the information is retrievable under time pressure. Spaced question practice suits it well.
- Paper B rewards reasoning within rules. Many questions describe a scenario and ask what a UK dentist should do. Knowing the principle usually gets you there even when the exact scenario is unfamiliar.
How our question bank is organised
OREeasy groups its 4,073 questions into twelve subject areas. The volume in each reflects how much of it there is to know rather than being an even split:
| Subject area | Questions |
|---|---|
| General & Emergency Medicine | 995 |
| Oral Biology & Anatomy | 648 |
| Oral Pathology & Medicine | 410 |
| Pharmacology & Therapeutics | 322 |
| Restorative & Endodontics | 278 |
| Law, Ethics & Infection Control | 262 |
| Prosthodontics | 254 |
| Periodontology | 237 |
| Radiology & Imaging | 201 |
| Orthodontics & Paediatric Dentistry | 199 |
| Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery | 185 |
| Dental Materials | 82 |
| Total | 4,073 |
These are our own subject headings, chosen to make revision manageable. They are not the GDC's categories, and the GDC does not publish a question-by-question breakdown of which paper each topic appears in.
Practise both sides. Every subject area above has three free questions, thirty-six in total, with full written explanations. No card required.
See also: ORE Part 1 explained and how to prepare for ORE Part 1.
Content descriptions on this page are drawn from the GDC's published ORE Part 1 information. The GDC is the only authority on exam content; confirm current details with them directly.