Dental assistants need to:

Communicate

• Speak clearly so listeners can understand.
• Understand spoken information.
• Listen to others and ask questions.
• Understand written information.
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• Read and understand work-related materials.
• Write clearly so other people can understand.

Reason and Problem Solve

• Use reasoning to discover answers to problems.
• Follow guidelines to arrange objects or actions in a certain order.
• Understand new information or materials by studying and working with them.
• Notice when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong.
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• Develop rules that group items in various ways.
• Recognize the nature of a problem.
• Concentrate and not be distracted while performing a task.
• Analyze ideas and use logic to determine their strengths and weaknesses.
• Combine several pieces of information and draw conclusions.

Manage Oneself, People, Time, and Things

• Check how well one is learning or doing something.
• Go back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information without becoming confused.

Work with People

• Be aware of others’ reactions and understand the possible causes.
• Teach others how to do something.
• Look for ways to help people.