To become a dental assistant, you need to have proper dental assistant training. Before we get into the training topic, let’s first talk about its role that plays in the dental office.
Dental assistants should make patients feel comfortable in the chair and constantly assist the dentist by providing tools or medicine to relieve the patient’s pain during the treatment. Besides working closely with the dentists, they also have to perform office and laboratory duties.
So, what’s covered in the training?
In general, there are not much of training requirements for being an entry-level dental assistant. If you are a high school student and thinking about taking dental assistant as a career, then you should take courses like health, biology and chemistry. And if you wish to get more education in this area, you really need to consider the training programs that include laboratory, classroom and pre-clinical instruction and its related theory.
Programs like these can take about 1 year to complete and at the end of the program you do receive a certificate. However, if it is a 2-year program which most likely offered in community colleges will get you an associate degree.
All the programs do require a high school diploma and some require certain courses being taken at high school, Unbearable Tooth Pain While Pregnant such as science or computer-related courses, in order to be admitted to college or vocational schools.
Basically, most training program prepare you to do the following: help the patient get ready for treatment, take X-ray, keep dental records, disinfect dental instruments and tools, set up the tray, provide instruction for the patients after the treatment Atlanta Dentist No Insurance and educate them about oral care. And of course, there are some lab work needed to be done, too. For example, you also have to prepare materials to make impressions and restorations and process X-ray negative according to the dentist’s instruction.
On-the-job training
This is a very hand-on training. In the dental office, students get to learn the real-life work by watching the dentist and the assistants performing daily duties and learn the terminology, the proper way to interact with patients and some office management like scheduling appointments, filing and billing that help to run the business smoothly.
On-the-job training is a great way to keep you posted on all the new technology changes and you can easily remember all the instruments and procedures while at the office.
Expanded training
In some colleges, expanded dental assistant training programs are offered. It teaches students who are looking for more advanced assistant jobs the expanded techniques, office duties, procedures and special applications. This kind of programs can last about 12-week long.