Becoming a Dental Assistant is an excellent investment in your future. Dental Assisting employment rates are projected to increase by 29% in the next ten years, so people with Dental Assistant training are expected to be in high demand*. Your investment provides career opportunities for both today and the years ahead.

Working in a dental office draws on a number of skill sets. You must master dental duties as well as complete administrative work and maintain an organizational system for the clinic. Job roles can vary from practice to practice, creating an environment that calls for adaptability. This important support role requires a number of different skills.

As an Academy of Dental Assisting Dental Assistant Graduate you are prepared for opportunities in:

• chair-side assisting duties and responsibilities.
• taking impressions and constructing study and master casts.
• operatory disinfection, instrument decontamination, and sterilization techniques.
• Preparation and disposal of local anesthetic.
• processing radiographs.
• Expanded Duties Dental Assisting–placing fillings and making temporary crowns and bridges

In addition to the above tasks, graduates receive practical hands-on training in areas such as:

• Taking and recording vital signs
• The role OSHA plays in operation of the dental office
• The use of dental specialties instrumentation
• Performing basic administrative tasks
• Completing dental insurance claim forms
• Developing independent job-seeking skills

Dental Assistant Externships

Academy of Dental Assisting  Dental Assisting programs require our students to complete a practical externship in order to graduate. The externship is crucial to the learning experience for every Academy of Dental Assisting student, giving them a chance to apply what they have learned in the classroom to a real world setting. The externship also provides employers an opportunity to assess our students’ skills prior to hiring entry-level dental assistants

The plan developed by the ADA Council on Access, Prevention and Interprofessional Relations and introduced by Dr. A.J. Smith, ADA first vice president, defines health literacy in dentistry as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate oral health decisions.”

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, Hispanic Dental Association and National Dental Association also participated in the meeting at the American Medical Association offices on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t want to see the enthusiasm we’ve seen at this meeting lost,” Dr. Smith said in wrapping up this initial forum of leading professional and public health groups interested in improving health literacy. “We need to be partnering with all of you, and we need to keep this group going.”

A Department of Health and Human Services senior official, Howard Koh, M.D., M.P.H., assistant secretary for health, summarized a national action plan to improve health literacy released earlier this year by the HHS Office of the Secretary and invited feedback “from your organizations on what works and what works well.”

CAPIR and its ad hoc advisory committee on health literacy in dentistry developed the strategic action plan as a set of principles, goals and, in some cases, specific strategies to provide guidance to the Association and its councils and commissions, dental professionals, policy makers and others to improve health literacy.

The ADA action plan identifies five strategic focus areas for the improvement of health literacy:

* Training and education;
* Advocacy;
* Research;
* Dental practice;
* Building coalitions (increase collaborations).

“The council realizes that these activities will require resources, financial and human, and believes the strategies should be viewed as suggested tasks to improve health literacy and not a prescriptive ‘to do’ list,” the ADA plan says.

http://www.ada.org/news/5069.aspx