Dental Careers: Dental Lab Technicians

When you go to the dentist, you'll see the people working at the front desk, the hygienist who cleans your teeth, and most likely the dentist as well. The people you won't see, in most cases, are the dental lab technicians. And yet these technicians are fundamental to a successful dental practice. If a career that combines dentistry and sculpting sounds appealing to you, then the job of a dental lab technician might be perfect.

Dental lab technicians perform one main function for a dentist's office: they take the molds of teeth that dentists get from patients and use them to create accurate models of those teeth out of wax. These fake teeth can then be used as a reference to build false teeth, or to make such dental structures as bridges and crowns, which the dentist will later secure onto a patient's mouth. Some technicians work in the back of a dentists' office, while others work in large laboratories and are contracted to do work for various dentists in a given region.

To become a dental lab technician, you have to have high-level sculpting skills. You also have to be a patient individual. Sometimes dentists will reject the work of a dental lab technician several times before they get a model they're happy with, and some technicians feel that some dentists reject pieces of work arbitrarily.

You can't become frustrated, however. Since it's your job to serve the dentist, all you can do is try to meet his or her expectations as precisely as you can. Dental lab technicians also work alone for long periods of time, so you can't be put off by solitude. It's rare, in fact, that a technician will ever have any contact with patients, except for instances when they have to physically measure someone's teeth for some reason.

What's interesting about this career is that you don't have to go to school for it. Having an associate's degree or even a bachelor's degree in some field related to science, anatomy, or dentistry will probably give you an edge when you're applying for jobs, but it's not necessary. Many dental lab technicians learn everything they need to know right on the job.

Labs often put new technicians through their own informal training programs, which teach him or her which materials are needed to create sculptures of teeth, and how to build and reshape molds. Sometimes a lab will consider a technician a trainee for a few years before he or she will be allowed to build dental sculptures on his or her own. Until that time, the new technician will always be under the supervision of a veteran employee, and will help the lab out by performing clerical and maintenance tasks.

There are courses and programs in dental lab work that a person can take at many community and technical colleges, however, so that he or she will be ready to serve as a full-time technician the very first day on the job.