Dental Assisting Schools
Dental assistants are the people who directly assist dentists. Unlike a dental hygienist, they do not clean or examine teeth. Rather, they have lab and office-oriented duties. For example, dental assistants sometimes schedule appointments, call patients, and educate patients on how to care for their oral health after a dental procedure. They make casts of teeth, sterilize dental instruments, and sometimes take oral x-rays. During dental procedures, the dental assistant is the person who stands with the dentist, handing him or her dental instruments, and keeping the patient's mouth dry by providing suction.
Many dental assistants gain their training on-the-job. In the majority of states, a special license is not required to perform the job of a dental assistant, unlike dental hygienists, who, in all fifty states, must graduate from an accredited program and pass a licensing exam. However, more and more often, dental assistants also opt to take special training for the dental assistant role. The training enables new dental assistants to find a job more easily, and it also leads to higher pay. Here is a brief look at dental assistant school.
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Accredited Programs - Non-Accredited Programs
When considering a dental assistant school or program, be sure to pick one of the 250 or so that are accredited by the American Dental Association (ADA). These programs have the best reputation nationwide, and have the seal of approval of the nation's most important and influential dental association. Graduating from a program that is not accredited might make potential employers nervous as to the education a new dental assistant has received.
On the American Dental Association's website, a simple search function enables visitors to look up all the dental assistant programs in their state. All fifty states have at least one certified program, but several states only have one or two programs.
The American Dental Association, however, is not the only dental association that offers accreditation for dental assistant programs. State dental associations also give school accreditation, and often a school that is accredited by the state association is just as good (but often less expensive) than the program accredited by the ADA.
The Typical Educational Path of a Dental Assistant
Most dental assistant programs are in community colleges, junior colleges, and vocational or trade schools. In general, these programs require that applicants be at least 18 years of age, have a high school diploma (graduating with at least a C average), or a GED. The majority of the training programs last less than one year – or about 9 to 11 months.
Coursework teaches the future dental assistants everything they need to know to do their job. They learn how to properly sterilize instruments, basic safety for patients and assistants while taking x-rays, how to communicate post-operative instructions to patients, and make casts of teeth. They learn basic information about oral diseases, and how to protect both themselves and the patients from accidental infections.
The cost of these training programs vary, but in general they range from just a few thousand dollars up to as much as ten to fifteen thousand dollars. An average cost would be about $3,000, which would include the cost of textbooks as well as the courses themselves.
After graduating from a dental assistant program, finding a job should be fairly easy. Inexperienced dental assistants expecting to gain their training on the job can expect to earn – at least at the beginning – about half the hourly wage that someone who has graduated from an accredited program can earn. In other words, dental assistants with no experience and no prior education can expect to earn about $8 per hour; by contrast, dental assistants who have graduated from an accredited program can earn $14 - $16 per hour as a starting salary.
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