I am thinking about doing either a dental assistant certificate (38units) or a dental technology certificate (20 units) program in the future. Both programs are one year. Which one would you take and which do you think would help you the most in dental school?
Dental assist. or Dental tech?
- Thread starter coolslugs
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Id say go with the dental technology certificate.coolslugs said:
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It depends on what you are looking for in your experience. If you want to see what it's like to deal with patients and if you want to check out what doctor-patient interaction is like, then go for dental asst. You also get to learn a lot about different procedures and observe how they are explained to the patient , which is important since this is what you will be doing in the not so distant future.
What does a dental tech do?
What does a dental tech do?
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If by "Dental Technology" you mean like a dental lab tech, do that. The hand skills you will gain there fabricating dentures and crowns and pouring models etc. will be way more useful during your pre-clinical classes than dental assisting. You can shadow a doctor and get similar experience to assisting, no need to spend the extra units in a certificate program to learn how to suction spit and mix alginate.
As a dentist you will not be making crowns and dentures. You will send them to a lab where the tech can do it. However, in most dental schools, you will have enormous amonts of pre-clinical classes waxing crowns and dentures and pouring models, and you may need to do these things for your clinic patients too. The advantage is this - if you can take 1 hour to wax up that crown whereas it takes your classmate 3 hours, that is 2 extra hours you get to go home and study Gross Anatomy, because all classes will hit you at once.
As a dentist you will not be making crowns and dentures. You will send them to a lab where the tech can do it. However, in most dental schools, you will have enormous amonts of pre-clinical classes waxing crowns and dentures and pouring models, and you may need to do these things for your clinic patients too. The advantage is this - if you can take 1 hour to wax up that crown whereas it takes your classmate 3 hours, that is 2 extra hours you get to go home and study Gross Anatomy, because all classes will hit you at once.
