Technician - Career development
It is possible to pursue your career in a variety of ways. You can gain additional qualifications and become an instructor technician, or you may choose to become a laboratory owner. Other options include becoming a salesman for a laboratory, trade company, or progressing within a laboratory to become a senior technician responsible for quality control, and managing other staff.
The possible career progression of a dental technician is set out below:
- Trainee Technician
- Registered Dental Technician
- Senior Technician / Chief Technician
- Quality controller within a laboratory
- Technical sales adviser for a laboratory, or trade company
- Laboratory Owner
A dental technician can either choose to produce a wide variety of technical items or can choose to limit his or her work to one of the individual areas below. Learning the appropriate methods to make such a wide range of items and deal with the variety of materials necessary is demanding and requires skill and precision.
Orthodontic Appliances
Acrylic or metal appliances designed by the dental technician, to the dentist's written prescription which are used to re-align teeth in a pleasing and functional arrangement.
Crown & Bridge Work
The manufacture of crowns and bridges, for restorative dental work, is a skilled task and requires experience and precision. A wide range of materials can be used, including metal alloys, and gold which is used in some types of crown, or porcelain which is used for the majority of crowns.
Prosthetics
This includes the production of dentures. These can either be made of a plastic material, or of a metal, such as chrome cobalt. The technician is responsible for the production of the initial set of teeth, which is usually done in wax to allow the teeth to be re-arranged as necessary. The production of a denture may take up to seven stages within the dental laboratory, and gives the dental technician an excellent opportunity to help create a smile.Advanced denture work may include the precision attachments associated with titanium implants used to provide the fixtures necessary to stabilise the dentures.
