Purpose Drive Dental Assisting - Lesson #3 of 23 - The Dental Team

Hi there, this is Dr. Dave King again. This is lesson number three, where we're going to talk a little bit specifically about the dental team. So let's first talk about what the purpose of the team is. Well, we know from just about every sport that's out there, aside from the solo sports, that a team is critical to really achieving a functional, efficient process in order to accomplish the result. The same thing applies with general dentistry. We need a solid team to help assist in providing high quality dental care and serving our patients around us. So that requires, in a dental office, you need doctors, of course, dentists, you need a front office team, you need a reception team, you need a dental assisting team, dental hygienists, and oftentimes a lot of the general dental offices will incorporate specialists into their team. Oral surgeons, anodonists, root canal specialists, brace specialists, orthodontists, gum disease specialists, periodontists. So there's a great, large team that can be drawn from, from the standpoint of offering and providing our patients with outstanding dental care. So let's talk first about the dentist. Of course, you can't have a dental office without a dentist. That's critical. However, the dentist is not, in my mind, the pivotal person in the dental office. We'll get to that later on. But the dentist is really important. So let's talk about this DDS, or the DMD, that you're seeing there. So DDS stands for Doctor of Dental Surgery. DMD stands for Doctor of Medical Dentistry. Essentially, these are equivalent degrees. It depends on which school you go to and the protocol they use to train. But basically, what we have is a dental specific training that results in one of two degrees, a DDS or DMD. Let's talk about the dental hygienist. The dental hygienist is a health care provider in every sense of the word. And I like in my offices to treat dental hygienists at an equal level as a dentist because they, they are well trained, very high quality individuals, well trained in what they do. And they're really providers. Some of the duties of the dental hygienist include taking radiographs, probing, measuring periodontal pocketing, recommending appropriate treatment, depending on the state, they may or may not be able to diagnose the need for gum disease treatment, removing tartar and calculus from above and below the level of the gingiva, making and taking impressions for study models, application of appropriate materials to aid in healing and in prevention of caries or sensitivity, appropriate patient education and counseling, and then collaborating with the oral health care team in providing excellent and consistent dental health care going forward. So the dental hygienist is crucial. Let's talk about the dental assistant. I've got some acronyms listed up here. The DA, dental assistant. CDA is certified dental assistant. EFDA, expanded function dental auxiliary or dental assistant. But basically, as we discussed in one of the previous lessons, the dental assistant has one of the most crucial positions in the dental office due to the significant patient interaction involved. And here's the line item list of things we discussed. But there are several things that a dental assistant will want to accomplish going through their dental career. A lot of them involve usually a basic skills exam, certified dental assistant certification, and then the expanded function dental auxiliary, which will allow them to do some of these things when they're appropriately licensed by the state. So let's talk about the front office team. And this is really, really crucial as well. We can't have a back office team without having a front office team to facilitate the patients coming into the practice, the dental insurance requirements that are needed. And this step is really, really critical from the standpoint of making sure we have appropriate team members in place. So let's talk about the operations manager, which is basically the individual that runs the entire show at the dental office. In concert with the dentist, the operations manager or office manager manages the entire team. There's a receptionist, which will help to answer phones and schedule appointments for the team. Benefits coordinator helps to manage the dental insurance. And the financial coordinator roughly is the same title, just depends on their individual training and specific title. Many offices have a corporate support structure, the dental support organization corporate support structure. So you may have a regional manager, a back office trainer, a front office trainer, a recruiting specialist, a regional partner, a vice president of the region, a marketing specialist. All these pieces, depending on your individual structure in the office, can be very critical. There's also the specialty referral network. And for many offices, the city specialists are embedded in the office. So the endodontist, there at the top, this is a root canal specialist. The periodontist, this is a gum disease specialist. The pedodontist, this is a child dentist specialist. They see kids, pedos, pedes. The orthodontist is the braces and Invisalign and whatnot specialist. And then the oral surgeon that does a lot of the extractions and dental implant placement and other more surgical types of procedures. And then there's also a regulatory team. This is critical that we remember. With the dental team, with any type of a dental office, any type of medical or dental practice, there is regulation that needs to be considered. So there's a dental board for every state that manages how a dental office runs and to ensure that the patients are treated well above the standard of care and there's quality treatment happening. There's an insurance commissioner for the state that will help to facilitate the insurance companies working with the dental offices or the corporate support structures. Oftentimes there are consultants that will help and assist in making the team, the dental office team, more efficient, more functional, so that they can be more effective. Pharmacy board, of course, to regulate medications that are prescribed. The DEA, which is a drug enforcement agency, which will help to manage medications that are prescribed and to ensure that they're prescribed appropriately, especially in today's opioid crisis that's happening across our country. This piece of the regulatory puzzle is really critical in helping to assure that we, as providers, are providing appropriate prescription recommendations for our patients. So let's end this particular lesson with a test. Name the five dental specialists discussed in this section. And again, I'd recommend that you pause and write these answers down somewhere. So number one, name the five dental specialists discussed in this section. Number two, true or false, dental hygienist cannot take radiographs. Number three, which dental auxiliary probes periodontal pockets? Number four, what does EFTA stand for? Number five, what does CDA stand for? And true or false, the DEA is not part of the regulatory team. So go ahead and pause it, write your answers down. The next slide will have all the answers. So why don't you take a stab at writing these answers down before you move on to the next slide, which is right here. You can pause it here as well and look at those answers. So that is the end of lesson number three, the dental team. So the next lesson, we're going to talk about patient advocacy. So thank you for watching. Enjoy spending this last few minutes with me. See you in the next lesson.