New report reveals vital role of dental assistants
New data highlights the vital role dental assistants play in dental offices. According to the results of DANB’s Job Analysis Report, dental assistants perform over 200 essential duties that are crucial for delivering effective dental care.
Dental assistants play a pivotal and wide-ranging role in dental practices. The results of the job analysis provide important insights on the value of dental assistants, and considerations for dental offices to attract and retain these professionals.
Dental assistants perform a number of tasks across different areas. The chart below illustrates those areas and the percentage of tasks performed within each.
Beyond their core duties of infection prevention and control, acquiring dental images, and chairside and office duties, dental assistants perform and assist with a variety of other functions. The chart below illustrates the percentage of dental assistants who assist with or perform one or more functions related to these procedures.
About the report
DANB developed this report to gain a deeper understanding of dental assistants’ work and their impact on the dental team. In May 2023, a diverse group of dental professionals, including dental assistants, educators, and dentists, met to perform a job task analysis of the dental assistants’ role. Participants identified the duties and tasks performed by dental assistants, as well as the underlying knowledge, skills, abilities, and attributes required to perform those tasks.
Following the meeting, DANB sent an online survey to dental assistants across the country to learn more about how often they performed each task and if they performed tasks independently or assisted. More than 4,700 dental assistants across all levels of experience responded.