Greater Utilization of Dental Technicians, I. Report of Training.

This report of one phase of a study concerned with seeking means of extending the success of dental officers through delegation of certain treatment procedures to auxiliary personnel focuses upon determining the amount of training dental assistants (termed dental technicians by the Navy) require in order to perform the treatment procedure involved. Twelve dental assistants who had had no special training beyond the Navy's 16-week Dental Technician Training Course and whose dental assisting experience ranged from less than 3 months to 23 months were trained in a 7-week course to perform several specific treatment procedures. Evaluators examined 21 restorations which had been inserted by trainees and 41 which had been done by conventional methods. Only one restoration inserted by a trainee was considered unsatisfactory and all restorations inserted by conventional methods were scored satisfactory. It was concluded that the assistants' special training had been sufficient to justify proceeding to the next phase of the study which involved clinical tests of the restorations, which are reported in a related document (VT 007 733). (JK)