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California RDH licensure · Dental Hygiene Board of California
Prepare for the California RDH Law and Ethics exam with a guide, free practice questions, and a course for dental hygienists.
Course: $99 one time · 180 days of access
Last verified: July 24, 2026 · Primary sources below
Reviewed by Mahtab Mansour, DDS.
The exam at a glance
Officially the Registered Dental Hygienist (RDH) Laws and Ethics Written Examination, run by the Dental Hygiene Board of California (DHBC) through PSI test centers.
Fees and windows
$200
DHBC application fee
$32.07
PSI fee per sitting, retakes included
1 year
Eligibility window to sit the exam
70%
Pass rate, FY2024–25 (809 of 1,163)
Pass rates from the Legislature's 2023 sunset review of the DHBC — the only published source. Roughly one candidate in six or seven still fails a sitting.
California RDH · DHBC · 1A
Untimed
Question 1 of 15
An adult patient agrees to quadrant scaling and root planing after the dentist's diagnosis. The hygienist explains the procedure, and the patient signs the office consent form — but no one mentions that root sensitivity and gingival recession commonly follow. The patient later sues, saying she would have chosen differently had she known. How would California law most likely characterize that claim?
Official 2025 outline
The 2025 outline spans 29 tasks and 61 knowledge statements across three areas: Consent, Confidentiality, and Patient Privacy (35%); Standards for Professional Dental Hygiene Practice (35%); and Obligation to the Patient and Professional Role (30%). The three 20% blocks — 1A, 2A, and 3A — are 60% of the exam on their own.
| Block | Name | Weight | Covers | Free guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Informed Consent and Patient Rights | 20% | Consent for treatment, patient rights, capacity, minors | Study 1A |
| 1B | Patient Privacy and Protected Health Information | 9% | HIPAA, California confidentiality rules, PHI handling, telehealth privacy | Study 1B |
| 1C | Limits to Confidentiality and Mandated Reporting | 6% | Child, dependent-adult, and elder abuse reporting duties | Study 1C |
| 2A | Scope of Practice, Professional Conduct, and License Requirements | 20% | What an RDH may do under which supervision level, unprofessional conduct, licensing duties | Study 2A |
| 2B | Professional Practices | 15% | Record-keeping, billing and fees, advertising rules | Study 2B |
| 3A | Obligation to the Patient | 20% | Duty of care, patient-first obligations, referral duties | Study 3A |
| 3B | Obligations within the Professional Role | 10% | Conflicts of interest, practitioner impairment, colleague misconduct | Study 3B |
Application flow
1. Apply to the DHBC
Online via BreEZe (PDF/JPEG uploads, credit card only) or on paper by mail. Application fee: $200.
2. Get deemed eligible
The board reviews the application and notifies PSI once you are eligible. Your 1-year exam window starts here.
3. Register with PSI
PSI mails a scheduling notice; register and schedule at a PSI test center. Exam fee: $32.07 per sitting, non-refundable.
4. Sit the exam
60 items in 90 minutes, in person only — no remote proctoring. Results print on-site and transmit to the DHBC.
5. Background clearance, then license
The license issues only after DOJ and FBI clearance. No license about 30 days after passing? Contact the DHBC.
The clock that matters: your eligibility expires and the application is deemed abandoned if you do not take the exam within one year of being deemed eligible — then it is a new application and a new $200.
Stale-prep traps
The outline changed in 2025
The current outline is dated 2025 with area weights 35% / 35% / 30%. Prep keyed to the previous outline's framing and weights describes an exam that no longer exists.
Clinical-exam waiver since 2024
CA-program graduates applying within 3 years of graduation need no clinical exam (AB 1257, BPC §1917(b)(2), eff. 1/1/2024). The Law and Ethics exam is never waived — including for licensure by credential (BPC §1917.1(a)(4)).
The renewal fee is $300, not $160
The biennial renewal fee rose from $160 to $300 on July 1, 2022, with a $150 delinquency fee. Older materials still quote $160.
There is no $125 application fee
A "$125 application fee" circulates in AI-generated answers. The DHBC's own checklists state $200 — and the only other required fee is PSI's $32.07 per sitting.
BLS is now statutory
AB 1257 made current basic life support (BLS) certification a statutory licensure requirement (BPC §1917(g)).
Dentist-exam rules do not apply here
The dentist exam belongs to a different board (the DBC), publishes no question count, and has no fixed 75% rule. Prescribing duties like CURES and opioid counseling are dentist-exam material — an RDH cannot prescribe (BPC §1908).
Free first, paid if it helps
The free test samples all seven outline blocks and shows you a weak-block map against the official 2025 outline. The paid prep adds statute-cited modules, a question bank with rationales, a full-length practice exam, and review sheets. Access to the study materials is provided for 180 days from the date of purchase. Reviewed by Mahtab Mansour, DDS. There is no pass guarantee.
Free practice questions by topic
Exam FAQ
60 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes — 50 scored and 10 unscored pretest items — computer-based at a PSI test center. The Candidate Information Bulletin's own text hedges the pretest count as "five to ten" in one place, so answer every question as if it counts.
75% minimum, set by regulation at 16 CCR §1121(c). Unlike the dentist exam — which uses a criterion-referenced passing score, not a fixed percentage — the hygiene exam really does have a fixed 75% rule.
A $200 payment to the Dental Hygiene Board of California — the current application itemizes it as a $100 application fee plus a $100 initial license fee, which is how it squares with BPC §1944(a)(1)'s $100 cap on the application fee itself — plus $32.07 to PSI for each sitting, first attempt and retakes alike. The "$125 application fee" that circulates in AI answers does not appear in any DHBC document.
The official 2025 outline has three areas: Consent, Confidentiality, and Patient Privacy (35%); Standards for Professional Dental Hygiene Practice (35%); and Obligation to the Patient and Professional Role (30%). The three 20% blocks — informed consent, scope of practice, and obligation to the patient — are 60% of the exam on their own.
Yes. Licensure by credential waives the clinical exam, but BPC §1917.1(a)(4) still requires passing the California Law and Ethics examination. Every route into California hygiene licensure includes this exam.
The latest complete year the Board has published is FY2024-25: 809 of 1,163 candidates passed, a 70% rate, in the DHBC's November 8, 2025 meeting materials. FY2023-24 was 544 of 668, or 81%. Older figures from the Legislature's 2023 sunset review ran 80–89% across FY2018–22 and are now historical. The Board publishes the counts without explaining what moved them, so read them as rates rather than as a verdict on any one candidate.
No waiting period appears anywhere in the regulations — 16 CCR Division 11, Article 6 imposes none for the written exam. The DHBC does not publish the retake application's processing mechanics, so confirm the steps with the board; the only fee the bulletin guarantees you pay again is PSI's $32.07.
Last verified July 24, 2026. The material rules on this page trace to these primary sources:
Dentovio is an independent publisher. It is not the Dental Hygiene Board of California, PSI, or an official government service, and this page is not legal advice.
This page summarizes publicly available California dental hygiene law as of the last verified date shown. Laws change. Confirm current requirements with the Dental Hygiene Board of California before acting.
Reviewed by Mahtab Mansour, DDS. The reviewer is a dentist, not an RDH or hygiene educator.