You pride yourself in providing a great patient experience and high-quality results. Impressions are taken, sealants are applied, and coronal polishings are done with expert care with you in the assistant’s chair.
Are you keeping your resume up to date as you grow your career?
You don’t have to research for hours to create a successful resume. Use our expanded functions dental assistant resume templates to showcase your top skills meaningfully, so you can get back to helping patients achieve excellent oral health.
What Matters Most: Skills & Experience
You’re always learning and growing as an expanded functions dental assistant (EFDA). You’ve continued to add skills to your repertoire over time.
Consider how your newly acquired skills fit into your resume. Looking at the specific job description can help. For instance, some dental practices may need an assistant to monitor nitrous oxide during operations, while others may be looking for someone great at applying topical anesthetics.
Here are some of the most popular skills for expanded functions dental assistant resumes.
9 most popular expanded functions dental assistant skills
- Applying sealants
- Crowns and bridges
- Digital radiology
- Eaglesoft
- Operation instructions
- Sterilization techniques
- Dentrix
- Coronal polishings
- Dental impressions
Sample expanded functions dental assistant work experience bullet points
The medical field has strict procedures in the hiring process, and for good reason. The results you achieve as an EFDA matter.
Show data-based examples of the results you’ve achieved on the job. Think about the number of patients you’ve treated successfully and the specific results your work had for them.
You’re used to clearly explaining pre and post-operative instructions to patients, so apply the same methods here to develop concise examples that will make sense to anyone.
Here are a few samples:
- Used proper infection control policies to sterilize equipment with no errors over 5 years.
- Fabricated 103 temporary crowns using proper impression-taking techniques that ensured patient safety and helped them eliminate ongoing dental pain.
- Provided oral health education to patients using proper techniques to reduce the number of patient cavities by 33%.
- Used Eaglesoft to schedule patient appointments and process insurance claims with 99% accuracy over 4 years.
Top 5 Tips for Your Expanded Functions Dental Assistant Resume
- Reverse-chronological formatting is the best fit
- Most dental assistants grow into an expanded functions position. Reverse-chronological resume formatting will show your most recent experiences first and then work down to show the progress in your career. It’s helpful to show you’ve added skills like fabricating crowns and applying sealants over time.
- Keep your resume to one page
- A one-page resume will ensure it’s the most relevant for the position. For instance, if you’re applying to a job where you’ll be assisting in surgical procedures, experiences related to anesthetics or nitrous oxide handling will be the best fit.
- Combine interpersonal and technical skill
- EFDAs must provide an excellent patient experience while getting great results from procedures. You can show your abilities by combining interpersonal and technical skills, such as explaining operatory procedures to put patients at ease while successfully assisting in 87 root canals over your career.
- Consider adding a resume summary
- You’ll likely have much experience at this point in your career. A two to three-sentence summary statement can show you have the right skills for the position. For example, completing over 1,000 X-rays can show you’re an excellent fit for a practice looking for a radiology assistant.
- Use an organized template
- It can be easy for your wealth of experience to get disorganized. You’ll want to use a good resume template with defined headings showing your work history in the dental industry, certifications, and bullet points from career experience in tasks like sterilizing equipment and coronal polishings.
If you have many certifications, limit the ones you include to avoid confusion. The best practice is to include the most job-specific ones. Your radiology certification will be vital for X-ray technicians, and certification in sealants will be necessary for many chairside assistant positions.
Your cover letter can provide additional information you couldn’t fit on your resume. For instance, you can explain how you provide a great patient experience, your passion for oral healthcare, or what makes you want to work for a specific dental practice.
It isn’t uncommon for EFDAs to struggle with this. Make sure everything you include is as job-specific as possible. For example, having lots of information about your skills in operative procedures will be essential for assistants who will be chairside during surgeries.
