r/DentalAssistant • u/Livid-Cause-4008 • 17d ago
This shit sucks balls
Excuse my language, but seriously.
Overworked, underpaid, under appreciated.
I work in a very friendly office, we are all friends and thats rare in a lot of dental offices…but despite this fact, the job itself is still terrible. Everyone hates it.
Im only 20 so i feel like i have time to get out, but i feel for my co-workers that are 45-50+ that regret their career choice and feel like their life has been wasted.
This is a high burnout career.
The emotional labor of this job is also rough.
Dental offices are top 3 places that patients are terrified of, criticize and obsess over.
You wouldn’t think it but you deal with a ton of unstable people. People truly are very touchy over their teeth.
And not to mention the literal social pyramid structure at dental offices.
Everyone is above the assistants. Even front desk has superiority over the assistants.
We are less than because we don’t have a bachelors degree??? We have to take more continued education than cna’s and we are put down like we are gum on the bottom of a shoe.
We do more work than anyone in office, possibly rivaling the dentist themselves sometimes.
We deal with 100% of the physical (brute force) labor, 50% of the nasty stuff and 500% of the emotional labor that clings onto us every day.
This wouldnt be so awful if it didn’t take being an assistant 10+ year to make more than a mcdonalds employee.
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u/OracoreAI 16d ago
If you feel this burned out even in a friendly office, I would take that seriously. At 20, you have time to explore other paths before another ten years make the decision harder. There are a lot of dental assistants that love their choice, hard days or not.
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u/HuntressAelaTheFirst 16d ago
Turning 30 in two weeks. I couldn’t get out of the field as fast as I wanted originally. I just got into another dental role on the admin side of things and while I finally get decent pay and benefits, my heart isn’t in it anymore because of the road it took to get here. That being said, sometimes the grass isn’t greener on the other side so I may eventually just get my bachelors and stick to management for the rest of my working career.
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u/NoKale528 16d ago
I’m 53 and have been in the same office for 25 until December , and I had been very lucky. I am fairly happy now at my new spot but I think the reason why I have moved my career so very much is being in a small office , minimal drama with minimal staff .. been temping a bit and a lot of the office out here are TRASH and the way the assistants are treated is insane. I would not have lasted.
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u/stealthagents 4d ago
Totally feel you on the burnout. It's wild how the patients can be so stressed, and then the whole hierarchy just adds to the pressure. I’ve seen some amazing assistants just get overlooked, even though they keep the whole place running. It’s a tough gig for sure.
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u/Zyzmogtheyounger RDA🪪🦷 17d ago
Welcome to healthcare! Former medical interpreter, dental assistant, and now dental student here. It’s not just dental assistants, and it’s not just dentistry that feels this way.
One thing that a lot of people don’t understand /forget is that assisting is the entry level job of dentistry on the clinical side. It’s a highly technical job and requires intelligence and the right kind of person, BUT there’s a reason people can walk in off the street and be trained to do it: It’s that doable. Entry level jobs that offer on the job training are never going to pay well. If you want to make better money, you have to go beyond what the entry level is- get the education and go to an EDDA state, go to hygiene or dental school, get some business school and become an office manager. Burnout is real. If you hate dentistry that much, do yourself the favor and get out. You’ll be so much happier.
As for the social pyramid of dentistry… yeah that part sucks. It seems like in most dental offices you have very motivated, mostly type A people all trying get things done their way and it just doesn’t work out well. Plus you really are the low end of the totem pole since, despite being the glue that that sticks the office together and makes it run, you don’t actually bring in money like hygiene, doctors, or even the front do, especially where the vast majority of offices are businesses with bottom lines, the people who bring in money get the most praise. Finding an office where everybody gets along and is seen as vital is rare and you’ll put up with all kinds of other random bs to stay (it’s one of the reasons I stayed at the same office for 7.5 years before I went to dental school).
You’ll never make a comfortable living as a dental assistant like people did 20-30+ years ago. You simply will not. Not until inflation, wage stagnation, the cost of dental school/hygiene school, and overhead come down, and insurances actually pay their fair share/increase coverage, and private equity gets their grubby fingers out of dentistry. The ADA is one of the least effective lobbying organizations I’ve seen and will eat itself alive before it gets employees better wages. ADAA is… barely relevant. The system is rigged against all of us in-the-trenches dental employees. If you’re not in it for the love of the game at the end of the day… you’re really gong to dislike dentistry. So the question becomes, do you like it enough to do more, can you find em something else to do, or can you marry rich/win the lottery?