The General practitioner must learn these techniques through short course of a one day or more duration. You can understand that there is a significant difference in the training of a specialist that involves several years of classroom and patient care under strict supervision with specified guidelines as opposed to the dentist who takes some weekend courses without any standardization or regulation. Oral surgeons will study as many as 6 years after dental school to learn their way around the oral cavity. They will train rigorously to provide all sorts of surgical procedures while learning how to protect the patient and maximize the result to better the patients dental condition. Periodontists typically train for three years after dental school learning specific areas of surgery which will also include dental implant placement.
Prosthodontists typically train for three years to learn the best ways to restore dental implants.
In some programs today, Prosthodontists are also trained in implant placement although that is still rare. General dentists never get implant training in a dental school environment, because there is just not enough time to teach such specialized techniques. But, any general dentist who wants to place and restore dental implants is by law free to do so, even if it is not in the best interests of the patients. I am a Board Certified Prosthodontist and my training enables me to efficiently and predictably restore dental implants. I started doing that in 1984 and my results have always been very good.