Hello,                                                                                                                                                                              I am a first year dental hygiene student at Lord Fairfax Community College.  The amount of money, time and effort that we put into our education is crucial to the developement of a competant professional.  As a RDH we uphold a standard of care that is expect by every patient that we have in the future.  We are in a rigorous two year program for a reason and we are sacrificing a lot to become registered dental hygienists.  When I look for a job, and the dentist wants to allow dental assistants to scale I will find another office to work. Scaling without proper education is unethical.  The foundation of a good dental practice is having a well developed treatment plan and an educated professional properly evaluating each client, and being the initial eyes to relay information to the doctor. Without proper education, the assistant may not recoginze defects and more involved issues.  To have a dental assistant that does not have the proper instrumentation techniques and does not know the anatomy/histolgy of the oral cavity will be most importantly detramental to the patient.  It would do more harm and could potentially be a liability for malpractice. As DDS's and RDH's we have an ethical obligation and take an oath to provide the utmost of care to all.  Anything less is unethical. DO NOT PASS THIS BILL.  Thank you for your time and consideration.