My fellow dental hygienists and myself are concerned when we hear proposals to extend supragingival and subgingival scaling duties to dental assistants. As a twenty year veteran dental hygienist and a dentist's wife, I understand the problems of increased overhead and hygienist shortages in some areas. However, I also recognize the increase in malpractice complaints and the increased dental knowledge of many of our patients. Our patients have come to expect quality dental care by professionally trained providers. You may opt to save patients money by reducing the pay of employees, dental assistants vs dental hygienists, but are you providing the same quality of care? Expanding the duties of dental hygienists and utilizing general supervision to continue income production while dentists are gone is a much more efficient strategy to increase your bottom line. Dental assistants, most of whom are trained on the job, do not have the dental anatomy and scientific background necessary for subgingival scaling. There are some dental assistants I would certainly trust to be trained to scale in a comprehensive program by an accredited source, but there are many more that lack the professionalism and dental education critical to more invasive procedures. Would you want a dental hygienist doing your crown prep after a weekend course? Please consider what you would want if you were the patient.
