Dental assistant / dental nurse — tasks, one by one

Assisting at the chair

No record found shows machines doing four-handed assisting; the US labour statistics agency expects dentists to keep hiring assistants to complete routine tasks so they can work more efficiently.

A projection and the absence of a record; they do not measure how chairside work is changing.

Cleaning and sterilising instruments

The work already runs through machines, with people operating and logging them: Scotland's guidance lists washer-disinfectors, benchtop sterilisers and ultrasonic cleaners for dental instruments and names the dental nurse or a decontamination operator as the person who operates them and notes readings.

Guidance in one country; it describes how the work is done, not a recent change in it.

Taking X-rays, impressions and scans

The method is changing and the task is spreading to other roles rather than to machines: a review of 17 studies found intraoral scanning faster than conventional impressions with similar results but more retakes, and Virginia's law lets dentists, hygienists, dental assistants and a new, separately trained digital scan technician take scans, with the dentist available throughout.

A review of procedure time and one US state's rules; they do not show who takes scans in most practices.

Records, charting and the front desk

AI voice charting aims at the recording role but is not yet accurate enough: a study describes the usual two-person workflow in which a dentist examines and a recorder enters the data, and its AI system reached 67.40% overall accuracy; the authors say a better benchmark would be dentists working with experienced dental assistants.

One study in one clinic setting with one language mix; it does not measure front-desk work.