Dental Technician Job Description, Key Duties and Responsibilities

Dental Technician job description, duties, tasks, and responsibilities — Dental Technicians prepare prostheses for dental patients. Image source: Cdicollege.ca

This post provides complete information on the job description of a dental technician, to help you learn the work they do.

It highlights the key duties, tasks, and responsibilities that commonly make up the dental technician work description.

What Does a Dental Technician Do?

A dental technician is the person who has been trained to prepare prostheses for dental patients.

These devices include crowns, veneers, full or partial dentures, as well as orthodontic appliances.

Each of these devices is custom made by the dental technician for the patient it is intended to be used on.

A dental technician job description involves taking information from the patient’s dentist, which includes impressions or molds, from the patient’s mouth.

The dentist would provide detailed information as to what precisely he wants the dental technician to do.

The dental technician’s role will be to collect this information and with it work with the molds, so as to build the specific prostheses as required or needed by the dental patient.

They perform the highest chunk of their work with small hand tools. They must be extremely patient detail-oriented to do this type of work all day.

Accuracy is a vital component of the job description of a dental technician. In a case that the appliance is not properly made, it must be returned to the technician for a replacement or even scrapped in order for a new one to be built.

Dental technicians mainly work in commercial laboratories. Most dentists, instead of completing it in the office, send this type of work out.

Each laboratory may have many dentists they perform work for. Some dental laboratories specialize in particular areas that make a full range of prostheses.

The fact that the work completed by a dental technician may be done maybe several miles away from the patient shows the importance of accuracy.

The technician would build the prostheses primarily on information from the dentist and his impression of what he discovered in the patient’s mouth. The appliance is then shipped back to the dentist.

In this age, career options for a dental technician are growing on a daily basis. The demand for work by dental technicians grows as cosmetic surgery becomes more common.

Dental Technician Job Description Example/Sample/Template

The typical dental technician job description will consist of the following duties, tasks, and responsibilities which they are usually required to perform by most employers:

Read specifications, prescriptions and examine impressions or models to determine the design of dental products to be developed
Fabricate, repair, or alter dental devices like crowns, inlays, dentures, bridges or appliances for straightening teeth
Remove porcelain or excess metal and polish surfaces of prostheses, with the aid of polishing machines
Use small hand tools for the preparation of metal surfaces for bonding with porcelain in order to create artificial teeth
Test appliances to be sure they conform to accuracy and specifications of occlusion, using micrometers and articulators
Apply wax or porcelain paste over prosthesis frameworks, using spatulas and brushes
Place tooth models on equipment that mimics bite as well as movement of patient’s jaw to determine the functionality of model
Create a model of patient’s mouth
Replace or rebuild wire sections, linings, or missing teeth to repair dentures.