Dental Assisting
What is Dental Assisting?
Dental Assistants play an important role in every dental practice. They support the dentist in all procedures and thereby increase efficiency within the practice. Dental assistants value providing quality care and typically have more patient interaction than any other person in the dental office. Therefore, a dental assistant needs to be comforting, have excellent communication skills, and enjoy working with others.
So what are the day to day responsibilities of dental assistants? The duties of dental assistants will vary among dental practices. There are interpersonal and technical skills that are needed to perform this role. Some of those include:
- Assisting the doctor during various procedures
- Obtaining medical history
- Taking dental x-rays
- Taking dental impressions
- Preparing the room for various procedures
- Preparing and sterilizing instruments and equipment
- Providing education to patients regarding healthy dental habits and oral care
- Creating comforting environment for the patient during visits
- Entering dental chart notes
- Performing various office task such as scheduling appointments, answering phones, ordering supplies, etc.
- Maintaining OSHA, HIPAA, as well as medical ethics regulations and guidelines
- Other expanded function duties such as monitoring nitrous oxide, coronal polishing, placing restorative fillings can be done with certifications.
- Plus much more!