Counting Dental Assisting Hours as Shadowing

[Chlorophyll Oracle]

When tallying up how many hours i've spent shadowing a dental office, am I allowed to count my hours spent working for the office as shadowing?

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[midman19]

There is a section in AADSAS for dental experiences where Dental Assisting hours and shadowing hours will both be entered. There is a specific distinction you will be required to make about the experience. You can choose if it was a job shadowing position or a paid position. With that being said, I think the schools want you to keep those separate. My suggestion would be to get the minimum hours of shadowing required by your schools done and then continue to assist and make sure to list all the assisting hours you have done. You'll want to meet the shadowing requirement because they asked you to, but If you have lots of assisting hours, they will see that on there as well and it will be a big boost to your application. They will essentially look at your experiences section and make a note of the total hours you have spent in the dental field, even though you still need to list the shadowing and assisting separately. I hope that made sense.

 

[doc toothache]

It is unlikely that your feet will be held to the fire in the absence of any formal "shadowing".

 

[Gutiesc]

It is unlikely that your feet will be held to the fire in the absence of any formal "shadowing".

This is true. I had 3.5 years of assisting and around 10 hours of shadowing. At my dental school interview they asked why I shadowed.... If need be, shadow a specialist just for the experience.

 

[Chlorophyll Oracle]

I think you guys are right. I'm need 60 hours for my program, so in reality it is just an additional 30 hours. I'll just get the minimum and then proceed with assisting. There is no sense to shadowing when I could actually get experience working with the dentist.