Dental Assistant Training Degrees

Preventative care is extremely important to maintaining a healthy and functional life, and at the heart of preventative care is the practice of dentistry and oral hygiene. If you’ve ever got to your annual cleaning at your dentist, and been surprised to see that the doctor wasn’t the one that prepared you for your procedure, or got you set up to take oral x-rays, then you’ve already have the pleasure of learning a little bit about what a dental assistant does. Trained to provide both professional and administrative support to a licenses dentist, a dental assistant is an integral part of smooth operations at a dental office. They are responsible for sterilizing equipment according to health standards, and making sure that the patient and the dentist have everything they need to complete the necessary procedures. If you are interested in this career, you should know that a dental assistant typically completes at least two years of training at an accredited junior college or technical vocational facility. There are currently over 200 dental assistant training programs in the United States that have been approved by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA). After graduation, many students are able to find jobs in private dental practices, public health clinics, or commercial dental service companies. Over the next eight to ten years, experts predict that the demand for qualified dental assistants will grow faster than the national average, with salaries falling somewhere around $32,380.