Please consider allowing individuals qualified by these regulations as dental assistants II to perform scaling on Type I periodontal patients. Dr. Hutchinson has provided a good summary of the issues as I see them, but I would like to add the following. My assistants see me do periodontal procedures nearly every day and see the level of care I expect. My hygienest never sees me work and does not know how fastidious I am and how exquisitely clean and smooth I expect teeth to be when I'm finished. As a result, I think it will be easier to motivate rigourous treatment of these simple cases with an assistant II than is possible with the hygienest.

I do not mean that hygienest are not capable for this same level of care. In fact, I'm quite sure that if did only periodontal treatment that the hygienests would produce better treatment than I would. But I'm still resharpening instruments ever 20 strokes like I was trained to do and I think an assistant would feel obligated to so the same onece they have seen me do more difficult cases.

Thanks for the oportunity to comment.