Organized Dentistry Changes Course on Washington

[DMDWANNABEE]

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For anyone interested, the Washington State Dental Association has decided to discontinue its resistance of the establishment midlevel dental providers. This move has been made in an attempt to allow the association more control over the creation of legislation regarding the new dental providers. Essentially, they will no longer attempt to prevent the establishment of midlevels, but rather try to create regulations requiring them to perform restorations under direct supervision of a dentist. Until now, interested parties have attempted to pass legislation that would allow Washington advanced dental therapists to function independently of dentists.

This is a link to the WSDA's resolution on the matter:
http://www.wsda.org/storage/hod-restricted/HD13.pdf

I think this is the direction we should be trying to head. Because midlevels seem unavoidable, we might be wise to bring them into the fold under dentist supervision and regulation. This, along with increased therapist educational requirements would be good for both dentists and, more importantly, patients. Patients would be safer, and our licenses would retain their integrity.

I also thought it was a bit funny that the resolution called for the allowance of dental assistants to perform bread and butter hygiene procedures.

OK. Sorry for the long post. Enjoy your studies SDNers, the weekend's almost here.

 

[Batmansvoice]

So basically one dentist could just buy a practice and fill it up with Mid-levels in the next few years. Oversaturation...

 

[theartofzahn]

Why give up? This is a fundamental change in position. Nothing is unavoidable, the public health nuts just want to make you feel that way. There hadn't been a dental "therapist" in the United states for a long time, why start?

 

[yappy]

I don't understand this at all. Why not just call a truce between the ADA and ADHA and tell other interests to go ***k themselves.

Dentists have little to gain in the long term from having dental therapists. Dental hygienists have nothing to gain from this either; as, most DH will not desire to do procedures at the expense of losing their bread and butter procedures [DH is a great job; good hrs & great pay]. When you take into consideration the drop in quality (a good prophy is difficult to perform as is restorative] it makes dentistry start to seem like an unattractive career field. Who wants to push out subpar work in a market filled with therapists and super-assistants to fuel a corp. takeover.

It seems like DH and dentists have a vested interest in holding the lines - both positions are great and appropriate for their respective education levels. By, essentially, de-specializing dental/hygiene procedures by creating a therapist and expanded assistant that sort-of-does-it-all I cannot imagine dentistry advancing much as a clinical service. In fact I can envision a future where dentistry devolved into a purely customer service industry like your local mall's nail salon.

The worst part of all this is access isn't even a problem - save for a few extreme geographic regions.

Oral surgery of bust.