- All Degrees -Associate'sCertificatesDiplomas EitherOnlineAt Campus Know the FactsHow to Become a Dental AssistantDental Assistant Job DescriptionDental Assistant TrainingDental AssistingDental Assistant Schools: Which is right for you?Dental Assistant JobsDental Assistant Salary: How much can you make? View All Articles >>>Dental Assistant Career TrainingYou can do a search of old television shows or movie clips to see how the dental assistant has been portrayed over the last several decades – they usually just weren’t.Dental AssistantThey were simply omitted from the scenery of a dentist’s office, and more so the further back you look. You would quickly find that the false heroics of the one-man dentistry show have merely been more conducive to the comedic and dramatic flare for amusement.For entertainment’s sake, it is seldom that the near super-humans are not juggling all of the tasks themselves on the screen, bringing about more laughs and gasps and creating debacles. Those would be the dentists with a suffering reputation in the real world, though.Thankfully, one is about as likely to meet a dentist today without their dentist assistants by their side as you would be to see them doing without a reclining chair, their ominous drill, and a skilled bookkeeper.At one time, dentists may have been considered the champion in solving toothaches, painful cavities and a plethora of other oral maladies but the assistant’s are quickly moving into the role of the one furnishing the support, understanding, comfort, sympathy and even relief that both precedes and follows the doctor’s harsher duties. It seems that off-screen these members of the team have become the unsung hero.Their ImportanceLogic would easily convey to us that the art of dentistry, with all of its intricacies and complexities being finely managed autonomously, completed by only the dentist, is about as likely as the designer of an automobile single-handedly putting out the finished project, ready to drive off the showroom floor.The obvious importance of the dental assistant’s value to a dentist becomes undeniable in the mere fact that a great number of dentist offices have several in their employ. These jobs, then, should reasonably be as numerous as dentists themselves.Roots of the Dentist’s AssistantAlthough it cannot be pinpointed when the first person was employed as a dentist assistant, it also should not be considered odd that it would have likely been around the time the practice of dentistry itself began. It may be surprising, though, to see that there is evidence that supports that dentist assisting jobs are not so new.At http://www.historicalmedicalart.com/ “The Lady Dentist and Dentist Assistant, circa, 2005” is a painting illustrating what is alluded to be the first woman dentist, although set in a rather modern facility.The scene depicts one, maybe two of them with the female doctor, Emiline Roberts (1837 – 1924). One dental assistant is shown on t