California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed Senate Bill 1311 into law, allowing unlicensed dental assistants in California to complete required infection control training through virtual courses. Five notes:
The Missouri Dental Hygienists’ Association and a licensed dental hygienist have filed a lawsuit seeking to block a proposed Missouri Dental Board rule that would allow expanded-function dental assistants to perform supragingival scaling and comprehensive periodontal charting. The petition, filed…
With staffing shortages and workforce challenges continuing to create problems for dental practices, more offices are turning to a combination of temporary and permanent staff members, according to a new report from Cloud Dentistry, a dental staffing platform. The company’s…
Big Rapids, Mich.-based Ferris State University wants to expand its hygiene program in order to help address the state’s workforce shortages, upnorthlive.com reported Sept. 21. The university is seeking to renovate its allied health building to allow more students into…
Roughly half of dental assistants are satisfied with their jobs in 2026, according to the Dental Assisting National Board’s 2026 Dental Assistant Hiring and Retention Report. The DANB survey was conducted in April. The findings published in the report are…
Employment of dental assistants is projected to grow much faster than the average rate for all other occupations, but challenges remain for the recruitment and retention of these professionals. Here are six notes on the dental assistant workforce: 1. Dental…
Employment of dental hygienists is projected to grow much faster than the average rate for all other occupations, according to data from the Bureau of Labor statistics. Here are seven notes on the hygienist workforce: 1. Employment of dental hygienists…
The West Virginia University School of Dentistry’s inaugural pediatric dentistry residency cohort recently graduated, completing the first and only pediatric dental residency program in the state. The three residents trained at WVU Dental’s Pediatric Dentistry Clinic and WVU Medicine Golisano…
Dental practices and DSOs may have to do more than increase compensation in order to get ahead of the industry’s growing dental assistant shortage. Dentalpost’s 2026 “Dental Salary Survey Report” pointed to future challenges with recruiting and retaining dental assistants,…
The U.S. currently has 7,980 dental professional shortage areas, according to new data from the Health Resources and Services Administration. The HRSA updates its dashboard showing data on health workforce shortage areas Sept. 1. The dashboard shows that 12,656 practitioners…