San Diegan here. I worked full-time as a dental assistant in a pediatric clinic last summer. Beforehand, I had two years of solid dental assisting work in a nonprofit that incorporated everything in a normal practice except insurance billing.
In California, dental assistants and registered dental assistants are two distinguished titles. If you're an aspiring dentist I DON'T recommend taking formal courses to become a registered dental assistant (which requires certificates), and here's why:
Being a DA/RDA is much different than being a dentist. As a dental student you are a health provider in training, and you are expected to be focused on not only the patient's mouth but their entire well-being. From my personal experiences this is often not the case as an assistant. Time spent evaluating x-rays or having extended conversations with patients (AKA doing dentist things) is time not spent sterilizing, chairsiding, taking other patients' x-rays, or other assistant work. In private practice much more than nonprofits, your manager will likely see this as time wasted. I found that other DA/RDA's I worked with in private practice were much less invested in treatment planning (more dentist things), which is completely okay because that's not your job as an assistant. To be clear, dental assistants are NOT mini-dentists.
In other words, being an assistant trains you to take great x-rays and learn procedures and charting.... but those are all things dental students eventually learn. I would argue that intensive shadowing and learning to THINK like a dentist are more valuable than learning a clinical skill ahead of time.
In Cali, you do not explicitly need certification to work in a dental office. That being said, I obtained my x-ray license and coronal polish certificate to expand the scope of my abilities in my nonprofit. Most non-registered DA's have obtained this either through school or independently, and seldom back-office assistants are hired without these. The difference then, between an RDA and a DA with these certs, are....
Here is the official webpage with a checklist to apply as a California RDA. Personally, I qualified via experience but decided that studying for the RDA exam, which is apparently not easy, would be a conflict of interest towards my actual goals to be enrolled in dental school. As I said before, you can find a shadow position with a great dentist mentor, I think that this is the best option. Being paid to do assistant work won't many doors in the long-term.
Sorry for the blog post
😛 but I hope I answered your question a little bit.
[Edited: some RDA exam details]
