Dental Hygienist vs Dental Assistant

Careers Articles | April 22, 2011

What is the difference between dental hygienist and dental assistant? Which career is expected to be more prosperous? What do you need to become one of those professionals? Here are the answers!

Many people think that dental hygienists and dental assistants have similar tasks. Well, it's not true. To become a dental hygienist you have to overcome more serious training. These professionals have more challenging duties. Want to look at them in detail? Here is the list of things dental hygienists are doing every day:

studying patient's health history
removing calculus, stains and plaque
charting patient's dental condition for the dentist
applying fluoride and decay preventatives
administering local anesthetics
taking and developing X-rays

Well, after becoming a dental hygienist you will have quite a lot of tasks! To be ready for this work you need to graduate from a 2-year Associate's degree or 4-year Bachelor's degree program. As you can see, becoming a dental hygienist is not a piece of cake!

And what is the way of dental assistant? In general, the training is much easier as comparing with that of dental hygienist. Assistants fulfill the following tasks:

assisting the dentist during the treatment
taking and developing X-rays
preparing dental tools for the usage
performing office management

What do you need to become a dental assistant? Well, you should complete a training program that will take you from 9 to 11 months. However, some dentists' offices offer on-job training for dental assistants. In this case you won't need any certificates and diplomas.

How about the earnings of these two professionals? You may guess that dental hygienists have higher salary. They get $67,340 per year on average. And becoming a dental assistant you can expect to earn between $22,710 and $47,070.

Still, there are some advantages of choosing the career of dental assistant. If you want to find out whether you like to work in dental care, this career is a perfect way to check your preferences! This is a good foundation training to get some practical experience before pursuing a degree in dental hygiene or dentistry.

If we talk about becoming a dental hygienist, it is quite interesting and well-paid career path. After completing your training you will enjoy flexible schedule and quite high salary. All you need is to evaluate your professional goals and go from there!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dorothy is writing about education and career choices for high-school students. She is interested in psychology, medicine and literature. More information about becoming a dental hygienist can be found here: Becoming Dental Hygienist