Dental Assistant

JOB DETAILS:
Department:
Dental Clinic; FTE: 1.0 (80 hours per pay period);
Workdays:
Monday - Friday;
Shift Length: 8 hours. Sign‑On Bonus: $2,500* (Sign on bonus is available for eligible external candidates; current employees, contract/temporary workers, and former employees returning to HHS within one year are ineligible).

Under immediate supervision, performs work involving routine dental procedures.

• Review patient chart and prepare instruments and equipment
• Perform procedures such as mixing impression material, taking impressions, pouring models, preparing base plates, preparing acrylic trays and bleaching trays
• Perform mechanical polishings
• Perform fluoride treatments
• Place rubber dam
• Remove sutures or excess cement from inlays, crowns and bridges
• Chart patient treatment received
• Provide dental hygiene instruction
• Perform x‑ray procedures and develop film
• Provide dental chair assistance during oral surgical procedures, operating suction equipment, arranging lighting, sponging operative area and supplying instruments and materials
• Schedule patient appointments
• Cleans and maintain equipment and work area
• Sterilizes and wraps instruments
• Orders supplies
• Prepare and maintain records
• Administer and monitor nitrous oxide. To administer, dental assistant must have completed a course on Nitrous Oxide administration
• Re‑cement intact temporary restorations and place temporary fillings (not including temporization of inlays, onlays, crowns, and bridges) to promote palliative treatment
• Etch appropriate enamel surfaces, apply and adjust pit and fissure sealants. Dental Assistant must have completed course on Sealant placement
• Perform restorative procedures limited to placing, contouring, and adjusting amalgam restorations, glass ionomers, and supragingival composite restorations (class I & V) and adapting and cementing stainless steel crowns. To perform Dental Assistant must have completed Restorative Expanded Functions training
• Place and remove matrix bands
• Fabricate, cement, and adjust temporary restorations extraorally or intraorally
• Remove temporary restorations with hand instruments only
• Perform mechanical polishing to clinical crowns not including instrumental
• Apply topical mediations such as, but not limited to, topical fluoride, bleaching agents, and cavity varnishes in appropriate dosages or quantities as prescribed by a dentist
• Take impressions for cast and appropriate bite
• Dry root canals with paper points
• Place cotton pellets and temporary restorative materials into endodontic openings
• Perform related work as required, but only after appropriate training

• Completion of an accredited dental assisting program
• Current license as a Dental Assistant through the State of Minnesota Board of Dentistry, or must pass the Minnesota Licensure Examination within 90 days of employment
• Basic Life Support
• Current license as a Dental Assistant through the State of Minnesota Board of Dentistry, or must pass the Minnesota Licensure Examination within 6 months of employment
• Must have completed a course on nitrous oxide inhalation analgesia