THE last batch of students graduated from the 40-year-old Dental Auxiliary School (DAS) in Kingston recently.

Twenty-nine individuals in four disciplines which complement the work of dental surgeons made up the last cohort to be certified by DAS before it is fully taken over by the University of Technology (UTech) School of Oral Sciences.

“It’s definitely going to leave a void,” Dr Erica Gordon-Veitch, president of the Jamaica Dental Association, told Career & Education after the graduation exercise for the group at the Courtleigh Auditorium last month.

“The practise of dentistry consists of a number of different subspecialties, and the auxiliaries form the backbone of the profession. Without them, we cannot practice,” she explained.

The training of the auxiliaries at DAS was taken over by UTech from the Ministry of Health in 2009 under a memorandum of understanding signed between the two entities.

Receiving their certificates at the function were nine dental nurses/therapists, one dental technician, six dental hygienists, and 13 dental assistants. The courses ran for three years, except the dental assistants who had two-year programmes.

Dr Gordon-Veitch, who became the first Jamaican director of the DAS in 1988, said the public dental service, and especially the service to the schools, may be affected by the institution’s closure as it is the auxiliaries which provide service to the public schools.

She said in the past when there was attrition from the public service, the numbers were replenished with graduates from DAS, located on Arthur Wint Drive near to the National Stadium.

Meanwhile, director of DAS, Dr Thaon Jones hoped that the training of the dental auxiliaries will be increased under UTech’s management.

“There is a critical shortage of dental assistants, especially in the government service, Jones told

Career & Education.

He said there was also a need for dental nurses/therapists, as the early cohorts trained at the institution in the 1970s are reaching retirement age.

Also, the numbers being trained in each cohort had dwindled from more than 20 in the early days to less than 10 in recent years.

Furthermore, there is a level of demand overseas for some auxiliaries.

“Over the past couple of years, Barbados has placed the recruitment of dental hygienists as a high priority,” said Jones, who is a dental surgeon.

He said there were no positions for dental hygienists in the public sector, with all hired by private practitioners. The hygienists are legally allowed to work on adult patients under the supervision of the dentist.

Commenting on DAS changeover from the Ministry of Health to UTech, Jones said “it was a challenging transition, but we worked it out in the end”.