Before starting your career as a dental assistant, it’s required that you complete career training at an accredited dental assisting school. This is to ensure that you are able to perform all of the duties of a dental assistant at the highest level, ensuring patient safety and satisfaction. The courses taught at dental assisting school cover a number of important topics and training programs typically last 9-11 months. Training be found at community colleges, career schools, dental institutes, and vocational schools. The benefits of training include a higher salary and better job prospects.

Patient Care and Comfort

One of the chief responsibilities of a dental assistant is making sure the patients are calm and comfortable at all times. This is important in creating a positive experience for the patient and also keeping them safe. Panicked or nerous patients can be difficult to control and risk doing harm to themselves or other patients. Dental assistants are trained to exhibit a calm demeanor in the company of patients, to speak to them in a reassuring manner, and to explain to them the steps of their dental procedure so tehy understand what’s happening to them.

Safety and Hygiene

Dental assistants are responsible for ensuring the patients to not contract an infection from an unclean environment. They must create and enforce infection control protocols to guarantee that patients are never exposed to any contaminated materials and that fluids and substances that might be liberated by a dental procedure are cleaned, and that the patient space is sanitized before another procedure is performed.

Instructing Patients in Proper Dental Care

After a procedure is completed, dental assistants are often tasked with instructing patients on how to care for themselves at home to keep their teeth in optimum health. This includes teaching patients how to brush and floss properly, how to properly apply vitamins or other medicines, and how care for sutures or stitches that may have resulted from oral surgury.

Office Management Tasks

Dental assistants are also essential for keeping a dentist’s office running smoothly. They are required to work with patients and suppliers on a number of tasks the often require the use of computers. Some of these duties include answering phones, scheduling appointments, speaking with suppliers, placing orders and billing.

Taking X-Rays

Another important responsibility of dental assistants is taking patient x-rays. Assistants must know how to operate complex radiological equipment, prepare patients, and record x-rays for the dentist to examine.

Certification

After completion of dental assistant training, most graduates take the exam to become certified. This allows the to use the CDA (Certified Dental Assistant) designation and makes them more attractive to employers.