dental assistant training

[blondie888]

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If you have no experience in dental assisting at all. How long did it take you to be trained as a dental assistant? Also, do the dentist teach you different stuff if they know you are pre dental versus if you are just doing pure dental assisting?
what percentage of accepted applicants in dental school actually have dental assistant experience?

 

[USU24]

Maybe 10% of my classmates were assistants. I would say it is a worthwhile endeavor because it provides you with more extensive experience than just shadowing. Plus, sometimes you have to assist in dental school.
As for your other questions it depends on the dentist you were working for. If he/she chose to he/she could teach you all kinds of stuff. But if you're getting payed to assist then I'm guessing there wouldn't be so much of that going on. Find someone you want to work for and talk to them about the arrangement. It is certainly not a requirement for dental school. It is helpful but you'd do fine if you never assisted. Plus a lot of what I learned as an assistant didn't really make sense until I learned about it in dental school anyways.