What are the PROS & CONS of being a dental assistant?
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 at
11:12 am
I’m looking into being a Dental Assistant but I’d like to hear what the job is like from someone who is a D.A. Is the pay good? How long does school take? Is finding and keeping a job easy? What are your daily duties? Thanks to anyone that can help me out!
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My best friend was a Dental Assistant for about a year and a half.
She was in school for only about 9 months, but I believe most programs are 1 year in length.
The pay is ok, you can expect about $11-15 per hour. The main downside is that since there is no formal education required, DA’s don’t usually get paid very much unless they stay at one dentist’s office for a long time and make their way up with raises. The other way to make more is to be trained in orthodontic procedures. Ortho assistants make more because they are more independent and hands-on.
She was able to find a job fairly quickly, but she did a lot of front desk work in addition to the typical dental assistant duties. So, waht you do each day really depends on where you work. But you can read about the nature of the job here: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos163.htm
People tend to get burned out in this job because they don’t make much and there’s not really room for advancement. My friend is now going back to school for nursing, she jsut couldn’t see herself making a living off of Dental Assisting.
well u get the pleasure of helping ppl with their teeth but u also have to watch out cause my mom did dental assissting and she got a herniated disk cause she never really sat down and she was always moving
The pros are obvious and are what you’ve heard that would make you want to work in the field. Short training time, relatively inexpensive schooling comparatively, great starting pay, great benefits, relatively simple job, good hours, and so on and so on and so on.
The cons are few, but are very very big. The biggest con is the supply and demand issue. There are TONS of graduating D.A. students and a whole lot less jobs available. The majority of these jobs want a minimum 1-2 years experience in the field with good references too. It’s kind of a catch 22, need to have the job to get the job, so a very large number of D.A. school grads simply never work in the field. Sure, there’s a lot of jobs for people fresh out of school, but it’s a small fraction of how many graduates there are. The other problem with this is that no matter how comfy you may feel in your position, you will always be easily replaced as a dental assistant.
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