Dental assistants
A dozen different jobs share one job title
An assistant who is brilliant on an implant list can be lost on an ortho day, and the reverse is just as true. WORKFORCE lets you ask for the day you actually have, across British Columbia, Ontario, and Washington.
Describe the day, not the job title
Tap whatever your chairs are actually doing. The request on the right is what an assistant sees when it reaches them.
What the chairs are doing
The rest of the day
How specific this request is
FocusedAsking for more is not wrong. It just means fewer people can honestly say yes, so post the day sooner rather than later.
The request
Dental assistant
One day, your city, your software
Chairside experience asked for
- Four-handed restorative
- Matrix, wedge and isolation
- Temporary fabrication
Professionals list the chairside experience they have, and a request reaches the ones who have listed it. We verify licensing and insurance on temp placements. We do not grade anybody’s hands.
Two assistants, identical on paper
This is not a story about one of them being better. Both are good. They are good at different days.
Same title
Certified, registered, six years in the chair, references you would be happy with.
Different days
One of them has spent six years in a general practice doing restorative and recall support. The other has spent six years on an oral surgery list.
Different Tuesday
Put the first one on a full extraction list and the day slows to a crawl. Put the second one on crown and bridge and the same thing happens in reverse.
Why it usually goes wrong quietly
The posting says assistant and means nothing
A request with a job title and a date reaches everyone and tells them nothing. The people best suited to your day have no way to know it is their day.
The gap shows up at ten past eight
Nobody discovers a mismatch in the morning huddle. They discover it in the second appointment, with a patient in the chair and a dentist waiting on an instrument.
Everyone is too polite to say it
An assistant who has not done much surgical work will not open the day by saying so, and a practice under pressure will not ask. The mismatch is usually silent right up until it is expensive.
Where the line sits
What we verify, and what we would never pretend to
Verified on a temp placement
- Registration or certification standing
- Professional liability insurance
- Employment, payroll and remittances
On a temp shift the assistant is our employee, so these are ours to run and ours to stand behind. On a permanent hire you are the employer and these become yours.
Listed by the professional
- The chairside work they have actually done
- The software they know
- Expanded duties their jurisdiction permits them
We do not sit in on anybody’s day and grade their hands. Experience is what a professional tells us they have, matched against what your request asks for, and the working interview is the shift itself.
One rate per city, published
Assistant and chairside rates are set by us and published by city. You are not negotiating on a Monday morning, and nobody is quoting you a premium because your dentist is standing in reception with no assistant.
On temp the rate is all-in: payroll taxes, remittances, vacation accrual, and insurance are ours. A placement fee applies only if you take somebody on permanently, and it is quoted before anything is agreed.
Worth knowing
- Expanded duties are jurisdictional
- What an assistant may do without direct supervision, and whether they may take radiographs, differs between provinces and states. Say what you need in the request.
- Software matters more than people expect
- An assistant who knows your practice management software saves you the first two hours of the day. It is worth putting in the posting.
- Repeat bookings are the real interview
- Most permanent assistants we place started as somebody the office had already booked three or four times.
Tell us what the chairs are doing
Send us the day, the city, and the software. We will tell you what we can cover and what the rate is.