As a dental hygienist and an educator, I oppose the proposal of including supragingival scaling as a delegable duty for the DA II.  While I value all members of the dental team and support maximizing the ability and education of everyone, this change would have a detrimental effect on the health of the individuals that we serve.  Several good points have already been stated about supervised neglect of this nature such as who would be the person to assess the so called “class I perio patient”, who would remove the subgingival calculus that is always connected to the supragingival, and who would assess other risk factors for the “class I perio patient” associated with disease such as overall health, familial history, use of tobacco, etc. 

There are also more programs now for delivering accredited dental hygiene education than ever in the Commonwealth.  The five traditional programs and now four distance sites cover the geographic regions of Virginia quite well.  We have graduated and licensed several hundred additional dental hygienists over the past ten years.  With this use of distance technology, the underserved communities for dental hygienists are directly related to the absence of a dentist residing in the area and cannot be attributed to a shortage of dental hygienists. 

The creation of the dental assistant II is an exciting time for us and we need to concentrate on expanding the delegable duties to those that will not be harmful to the health of Virginians.  Let us not compromise the high standard of care that Virginians have come to expect from us, not now and not ever.