Responsibilities and Opportunities of a Dental Assistant

dentist

Dental assistants are very valuable members of the dental care team. They are always helpful to the dentist and their patients. Dental assistants increase the efficiency of the dentist when it comes to their opportunity to deliver quality oral health care. If you have good communication skills, and you have good control on your hands and mind, you can join this. You might also want to make a career with the responsibility you can carry forward.


You do not have to possess any degree to be a dental assistant. However, reputed dentists require training and certification from dental assisting schools. Having a certificate from reputed dental assisting schools for this too, will definitely increase your value. There are high chances that your pay will be higher if you are certified from a dental assisting school.

You should first have a look at what are the possible jobs you can do as a dental assistant. As the duties of a dental assistant vary in the dental office, you may get the task which involves interpersonal and technical skills. The responsibilities you can be given are:

  1. Assisting dentist in treatment processes

  2. Taking dental radiographs (X-ray)

  3. Asking about patient history, taking blood pressure, pulse, and so on

  4. Providing instructions to the patients for oral care following treatment or surgery

  5. Teaching oral hygiene to patients and giving information on how to maintain oral health

  6. The assistant should know how to perform office management tasks such as maintaining data in computer and other paperwork.

  7. Working as an infection control person, developing a protocol and sterilizing equipment.

  8. Communicating with patients and helping patients feel comfortable before, during and after treatment.

Above you read about the responsibilities, a dental assistant has. Now you should learn about the career opportunities you have as a dental assistant. There are excellent opportunities in this field and some of them are:

  1. Solo dental practice (practice with one dentist) or group practice (practice with two or more dentists). Working according to your choice and your time is the best thing in the group practice. You also get more salary when you work at two different clinics.

  2. You can enroll in the company which manufactures products focused on the dental market, and you can work with them as dental product sales representative.

  3. You can connect with insurance companies and develop a career as an agent and get more and more people to get insurance and help them in processing dental insurance claims.

  4. You can work in public health dentistry. Working on prevention of dental problems within communities, setting up schools and clinics for prevention related work are great options.

  5. You can provide services to the bedridden patients reaching out to their place. You can also assist dental school students as they learn dental procedures.

  6. You can develop a career as an assistant in specialty practices like oral and maxillofacial surgery, orthodontics, and dentofacial orthopedics, periodontics, prosthodontics and pediatric dentistry.

The job of dental assistant not only provides personal satisfaction but also provides flexibility to your career. You get excellent working conditions and you can even increase your earning potential depending upon the responsibilities.

For developing great skills, you should complete your certification with best dental assistant schools. The Dental Assisting School of Georgia has developed as a top dental assisting school.

You need to be smart enough to turn to a place that helps you develop practical skills, provide quality material, give you certification courses and so on. Check out the best options and go ahead with your career!

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