I am opposed to uneducated dental assistants scaling.  As an experienced dental hygienist I am very concerned about the oral health and overall health of my patients. There could be many contraindications that come from an unexperenced, uneducated dental assistant performing procedures that should be solely designated to a dental hygienist. These questions come to mind...does an assistant truly know when a patient should premedicate before a procedure, contraindications from medications the patient may be taking, how to give proper oral hygiene instructions to suit each individual patient, how to properly and thoroughly scale and root plane each surface of every tooth...each tooth does have its own anatomy...believe me I took oral anatomy and learned every line angle, pit and fissure, furcation and so on. My point being I learned all these things by going to school and if a dental assistant wants to scale then she/he should go to school also. In order to maintain the quality of dental health in our patients this proposal should not be passed!