When choosing a career, it is but important to consider the salary that will be paid to you when you are already working. Before beginning your training, you will most probably be curios about how much a dental assistant salary can be. Learn about what a dental assistant does and how much your salary is when you decide to choose this career.
Being a dental assistant is one of the most exciting and fulfilling careers that you can have. You will be expected to do a lot of tasks especially if the dentist’s appointment book is filled up for the day. There are three main tasks that you will do which are patient care, administrative work and laboratory duties.
For patient care, one of your primary responsibilities is to accommodate your clients’ needs. For patients who are not that knowledgeable with the procedures that will be done to them, they will be asking a lot of questions especially if they are anxious about what will happen. As a dental assistant, you will have to answer their questions to alleviate their anxiety which will make them more comfortable for the procedure. This is just part of the preparation of patients for dental procedures which is also one of your tasks.
While dental procedures are going on, you will be needed to hand out the necessary tools that the dentist needs. After the procedure is done, you will also need to instruct the patients on proper oral hygiene and other necessary instructions.
Administrative work for dental assistants is quite challenging especially if you are working in a very busy clinic where there are a lot of patients. Your job will include maintaining the records of your patients, reception duties, making calls on patients for confirmation of appointments and the scheduling of appointments.
When you have experience on bookkeeping and managing of inventories, then you might also be asked to do those tasks. Finally, receiving payments and giving invoices is also a part of the tasks of a dental assistant. Meanwhile, for your laboratory duties, there will be training requirements before you can do them. If you have these trainings, then you can do radiologic procedures and other laboratory work such as cleaning of dentures, removing of bridges and crowns and other similar tasks.
The average dental assistant salary is around $9.78 to $18.89 hourly, depending on where you work and the working experience that you have.
If you work in the urban areas, your salary is bigger than working in the suburbs.
Let’s say that a dental assistant salary in the suburbs hourly is $18. When you work in the city, this can increase to around $19 depending on which city you are working. The highest paying cities for dental assistants are New York, Illinois, Georgia and Virginia where the average dental assistant salary ranges from $14.99 to $14.92.
When it comes to work experience, greater experience means better salary. A beginner dental assistant salary usually ranges from $8 to $14, those with one to five years of experience can earn $10 to $18 hourly while those who have more than five years of experience can earn $10 to $24 hourly.
Annual salary can then range from $16,000 to $48,000 depending on your work experience. There will also be additional salary for overtime which is definitely higher than your hourly salary. Of course, there will also be salary differences when you are working for a small clinic or a big hospital.
These bigger institutions usually offer bigger salaries although the work can be more difficult.
Looking at these figures for the dental assistant salary proves that this is indeed a great choice for a career. You get to do a lot of challenging tasks while at the same time, you are being paid well for the job that you do.
