Dental Assistant Requirements in West Virginia: Registration, X-Ray Rules & Allowed Duties

5CSR13 does not create a registration, license, or general title for a dental assistant; assistants work by direct assignment from a licensed dentist under the dentist's direct supervision.

It does require Board certification for any listed duty the rule tags with a board-approved course and examination condition — the assistant applies to the Board on its form and pays the fee set in the Board's fee rule, 5CSR3.

Coronal polishing on children under 21 carries added eligibility: two years and at least three thousand hours of clinical experience, a restorative or orthodontic expanded-duties certificate, and a Board-approved coronal-polishing course.

Every intraoral task a dentist assigns to a dental assistant must be performed under direct supervision, the rule's only supervision standard for assistants.

General supervision is a separate defined term the same chapter uses for a dental hygienist's supervision permit, not extended to assistants.

Direct supervision means the licensed dentist is physically present in the dental office or treatment facility while the assistant performs the procedure.

Section 4.1 lists 33 specific duties and intraoral tasks a licensed dentist may assign to an employed dental assistant, from placing and exposing radiographs, placing and removing rubber dams, and charting, to taking impressions for study casts, applying pit-and-fissure sealants, and fabricating temporary crowns and bridges.

Many carry a condition: a final evaluation by the supervising dentist afterward, the dentist's prior approval before the task is performed, or completion of a board-approved course and examination.

A closing clause, 4.1.34, requires Board certification — not a 34th duty of its own — for any of those gated duties.

The rule also bars an assistant from using any power-driven instrument intraorally except where a specific duty allows it.

Placing, exposing, developing, and mounting dental radiographs is the first duty on the assignable list.

Unlike many of the rule's other duties, it carries no board-approved course, exam, or Board certification requirement in the text — a licensed dentist may assign it under the same direct-supervision standard that governs the rest of an assistant's work.

The rule bars two categories of tasks from ever being assigned to a dental assistant, a dental hygienist, or anyone else not licensed to practice dentistry: diagnosis, treatment planning, and prescription, including prescriptions for drugs and medicaments or authorizations for restorative, prosthodontic, or orthodontic appliances; and surgical procedures on hard or soft tissue within the oral cavity, or any other intraoral procedure that results in an irremediable alteration of the oral anatomy.

The supervising dentist alone is responsible for deciding an assistant is competent before assigning any expanded duty.

A dental assistant may visually monitor a nitrous oxide analgesia unit, but only after successfully completing a board-approved course and examination and while maintaining current CPR certification through the American Red Cross or the American Heart Association.

The rule does not authorize an assistant to administer or otherwise operate sedation beyond this visual-monitoring role.