Working at dental office

[smile matters]

I might be taking a gap so I would like to do something that would should commitment or impress the adcoms. I was thinking dental assisting? Does anyone have an idea about how to get into that route? Do I take a class? certifications? Please help me!!!
If not assisting, are there any other thing I could do that would impress them?
Since my DAT is low, I might be retaking that but I am still going to have some time to do other things.

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[Stanelz]

Assisting is awesome. It will teach you so much that you wont learn in dental school. I have been assisting three doctors for the past year and have learned so many invaluable lessons about building a business, interacting with staff, and just techniques of how to deal with difficult people and difficult cases. It teaches you how to build treatment plans and discuss them with patients and how to behave in a dental office which is something that I see new dentists struggle with, they tend to overthink the entire thing and end up scaring their patients about apical infections, irreversible pulpitis, and other terms by using too much serious dental jargon. Assisting will teach you how to sell treatment and give you a good basis of how all the treatment works and how to handle things when they dont go as planned.

I have also learned so many techniques to save lab bills such as in house custom trays, using vps to adjust intaglios of crowns, etc. There are a lot of tricks they dont teach you in dental school and being an assistant will allow you to hit the clinical side running.

Some offices will hire you and teach you without certification but its rather difficult to find that sometimes.

Also do volunteering to show well roundedness

 

[MLC45]

Assisting is great, and like Stanley said, some offices are willing to train. You might also look into a dental lab. This area is one of the hardest parts of dental school. If you can learn how to do a wax up of a crown or set teeth in a denture, you will be so much further ahead and make your second year much easier to handle.

 

[ThirdMolarz]

See if there is a volunteer clinic in your area. These places generally take anyone and train you

 

[smile matters]

Thank you so much guys! All the information really helps! I will definitely look into. Another question that came up to my mind is how long does the training take?

 

[MLC45]

Thank you so much guys! All the information really helps! I will definitely look into. Another question that came up to my mind is how long does the training take?

It depends. To be a state register assistant with certificates, most states require either going to school or 2 years on the job. However, you can still be an assistant without certification to take x-rays, coronal polishing, and N2O pretty quickly. Check with your state for exact regulations.

 

[doc toothache]

Assisting is great, and like Stanley said, some offices are willing to train. You might also look into a dental lab. This area is one of the hardest parts of dental school. If you can learn how to do a wax up of a crown or set teeth in a denture, you will be so much further ahead and make your second year much easier to handle.

If one can learn waxing a crown as an OJT, maybe we could do away with dental lab tech schools altogether.

 

[MLC45]

If one can learn waxing a crown as an OJT, maybe we could do away with dental lab tech schools altogether.

It’s amazing what you can learn when you ask the right people.