dental assistants in no way should be allowed to do any kind of scaling. what will happen to the quality of care? i think a solution to the problem is to have more hygiene students graduating from v.c.u.  or more 2 year programs. the problem is distribution of hygienists to rural areas.

  i graduated from west virginia university in 2000.  every hygienist  had to do a rural rotation before we graduated. it helped us see the importance of rural healh care. if there were some kind of rotation with each hygiene student, they might see the importance of not staying in only the urban areas where all the hygiene schools seem to be located. 

  i feel very strongly that there is another solution to the shortage of hygienists. please don't let  assistants scale teeth!  we will not be improving anybody's oral health care!!!!!!