Dental assistants help dentists run their practices. They know about dental techniques and assist in patient care, lab duties, and office work. A dental assistant can do specialized work like developing dental radiographs, preparing dental materials, administering injections, and more. However, they need proper training to execute their duties perfectly. Here are helpful tips for training your dental assistants.
Have a Comprehensive Dental Assistant Training Manual
Dental assistant training programs should be comprehensive. The training manual should begin with your practice’s core values, mission, and vision. A comprehensive job description is also important since it lets dental assistants know what they should do. A good training manual should also have relevant communication scripts to guide your dental assistants through responding to patients and other parties.
Other important additions include schedules detailing the expectations during and after training. Checklists are also important for clarifying expectations in different situations. Training manuals should also include general office practices such as sending correspondence, answering phone calls, etc.
Standardize Policies and Procedures
Before hiring, it helps to have standardized dental practice policies and procedures. This should cover the most important information for daily operations, including technical details like benefits.
It helps to research best practices and adopt or create such policies and procedures. Most importantly, every new dental assistant should get a copy of the standardized policies and procedures. Periodically reviewing and updating policies and procedures will help streamline operations and deal with employee disputes.
Supervise and Follow Up Post Training
The best dental assistants still need to understand how you work in your dental practice. For this to be possible, a supervision program that monitors their work is crucial for correcting errors and identifying areas that need further training. Post-training follow-ups after two or three months are also important in the short term. The follow-ups should help address mistakes, identify areas of improvement, clarify matters, etc.
While there may be more helpful tips for training your dental assistants, this blog covers critical information. If you care to know more about why you should bother with proper training, here are the top benefits of properly trained medical staff.
