Dental Assistant

Job Description

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills, and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world. UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits, and natural beauty.

At the UW Dentistry Campus Dental Center, patients receive care by highly skilled, experienced UW School of Dentistry faculty and GPR Residents. Our experienced providers offer comprehensive oral care services to UW students, UW employees, their families, and guests. Patients can find all dental specialties in one convenient location, on campus at the Health Sciences Building. UW Dentistry Campus Dental Center is committed to the principle of diversity, equity, and inclusion and to providing an environment where every employee feels welcomed, valued, and appreciated.

The Dental Assistant 2 in this position may assist chairside with one provider for long periods of time, as in typical dental assisting, or move from provider to provider to assist them during critical times of their patient care procedures and as needed. The DA2 must have the ability to prioritize work and understand when and how the students or faculty providers need them.

When assisting students, the DA2 should communicate constructively to the student to help them gain as much as possible from their learning experience at the UW Dentistry Campus Dental Center. The DA2 must be caring and helpful yet be able to be firm if people within the clinic are not following the policies and guidelines of the clinic or Standard of Care.

The Dental Assistant 2 will be expected to communicate daily with the clinic faculty and resident providers to develop an excellent working relationship with them. The Dental Assistant 2 assigned in the clinic must be aware of the needs of the providers and assist them as needed.

• Provide excellent customer service to the School's patients, students, faculty, and staff.
• Aid dental residents and/or faculty in four-handed dentistry and in routine chair-side duties and patient care.
• Provide residents with knowledge and ideas to help aid in the dental care educational process.
• Orient new staff and dental residents to clinic procedures and policies.
• Clean and prepare treatment area.
• Keep all areas clean, orderly, and neat.
• Obtain and mix dental materials.
• Ability to expose digital intra and extra-oral radiographs.
• May conduct inventories and stock supplies.
• Monitor school-owned instruments for breakage and wear.
• Assess replacement needs.
• Monitor and maintain clinic hand pieces.
• Take impressions for study models and opposing models.
• Mechanical polishing to amalgam restorations, clinical crowns and supragingival areas.
• Place matrix and wedge.
• Remove excess cement.
• Fabricate, place, and remove temporary fillings.
• Expose digital dental x-ray images.
• Deliver fluoride treatments.
• Teach oral hygiene.
• Remove dry socket dressing and periodontal pak.
• Remove sutures; pack and medicate extraction areas.
• Assist in the administration of nitrous oxide analgesia.
• Placement of retraction cord.
• Select denture shade and mold.
• Acid etch and apply sealants.
• Place cotton rolls and holders.
• Other duties as provided in the dental laws of the State of Washington.
• Assist in the treatment of disabled patients and/or patients admitted through the emergency room; visit patients in the hospital to record and make entries in the chart regarding these contracts.
• Take and record vital signs when patients are sedated.
• Instruct students in the appropriate role of dental assistants in the delivery of patient care; assist in various four-handed techniques, such as anesthetic administration, instrument grasps and transfer and gold foil malleting.
• May support activities in a dental clinic, such as arranging and scheduling patient appointments, maintaining patient records.
• Take and record vital signs and review health history with patients.
• May provide information to departments regarding clinic services.
• May perform all duties of a Dental Assistant to the full extent of licensure.

• Check instruments and cassettes keeping detailed records of all assets.
• Maintain and operate autoclaves and sterilization equipment; disinfect items and follow pre-sterilization and sterilization-established protocol. Duties include scrubbing, ultrasonic operation, drying, sorting, resetting, packaging and labeling instrument setups.
• Assemble dental instrument packs.
• Store sterile and disinfected set-ups in preparation for delivery of patient care.
• Monitor school-owned instruments for breakage and wear; assess replacement needs.
• Monitor and maintain hand pieces sterilization.
• Perform weekly spore…