Workflow in your dental practice impacts its productivity. If only you and your dental hygienists can expose radiographs, you’re losing time and money. Dental assistants whose skill set includes radiography can help the practice run more efficiently by streamlining everyone’s workflow. With the tight labor market, investing in your dental assistants and getting them certified to perform radiography makes sense. You’ll reap the benefits, and they will be more satisfied and fulfilled in their work.
Online radiography training is available from MyDentalRadiography.com
Florida requires dental assistants to become certified to take radiographs. Fortunately, the Florida Dental Association (FDA) has the necessary solution. MyDentalRadiography is an online training program that prepares dental assistants to be certified. FDA members can enroll a dental assistant in the training for only $285. Non-members pay $385 per assistant.
What’s involved in training?
The online training is accessible from any device that connects to the Web and is available 24/7. The training consists of nine modules, each with a quiz to check the student’s learning. A final exam consisting of 80 questions must be passed with a score of at least 80%. Students can retake the test until they master the material and receive a passing score. The next step is for the student to complete a full-mouth exposure, including four bite-wings, in five or fewer attempts under your supervision. Once you, as the supervising dentist, have signed off on the radiographs, a certificate is issued, and the student can apply to the state for radiography certification.
How to get started
Make becoming certified in dental radiography a performance goal of your dental assistants. Discuss the benefits of additional training with them and explain that they don’t need to travel to a class, take time away from the office, or learn on someone else’s timetable. With MyDentalRadiography, your dental assistants are in control of their learning and can complete the curriculum at their own pace. Here’s what you need to know to get your assistants trained.
- First, you must go to mydentalradiography.com/fda and create a dentist’s account. You’ll view a short tutorial explaining how the program works and your responsibilities. After completing the tutorial, you’ll receive a supervising dentist’s ID number.
- Then, you can purchase vouchers for each assistant you wish to train. You’ll need an email address for each assistant; they may not share an email account.
- MyDentalRadiography then sends an email to each student, advising them to create an account and log in to begin their training. They will need your supervising dentist ID number to do so. The training platform keeps track of their progress, and each time they log in, it picks up where they left off.
- Students will receive automated email reminders to create their accounts. You can monitor their progress by logging into your account.
- When a student completes and passes the online portion of the program, you will receive an emailed notice that they are ready to expose the full-mouth X-rays under your supervision.
- When the X-rays have been completed to your satisfaction, you sign into your account and certify that they have successfully completed that step.
- MyDentalRadiography creates a certificate you can print, sign and present to the assistant.
- The assistant then applies to the state of Florida for certification, following the directions MyDentalRadiography provides.
Get started now
Develop your dental assistants to provide maximum value to your practice. If you need more information, visit the Continuing Education section at FloridaDental.org, or call the FDA at 850.681.3629.
Beyond the Bite 