Dental Anesthesiologist Job Description Template

Start the duties list from what the specialty actually is.

Dental anesthesiology is one of the 12 dental specialties the ADA's National Commission currently recognizes, and the National Commission defines it as the specialty that manages pain, anxiety and overall patient health during dental, oral, maxillofacial and adjunctive surgical or diagnostic procedures throughout the entire perioperative period.

A posting that says only "must be comfortable with sedation" tells a specialist nothing.

Name the services you expect — nitrous oxide, oral sedation, IV sedation, general anesthesia, or some combination.

Name the patients: pediatric cases, patients with special needs, dental-phobic adults, or an oral-surgery caseload.

Name the phases you want covered: pre-operative evaluation, administration, monitoring through emergence and recovery, discharge hand-back to the treating dentist, plus emergency preparedness and anesthesia record-keeping.

Write the credential line in two parts.

First, an active [STATE] dental license — licensure is state law, and, to take one example, Connecticut provides that no person may practice dentistry or dental medicine without a license from the Department of Public Health.

Second, completion of a CODA-accredited dental anesthesiology residency: the accreditation standards set the program minimum at 36 months.

Then check your state's sedation or anesthesia rules — the section after the template walks through how much they differ.

Candidates read the training line closely; our dental anesthesiologist career guide covers the path from their side, so your line and their expectations meet.

Be precise about board certification.

Certification through the American Dental Board of Anesthesiology — the specialty's certifying board on the National Commission's recognized list — is voluntary.

A "board certified" dentist completed dental school and the residency, passed the board examination and maintains the certification with continuing education; a "board eligible" one has the schooling and residency done but has not yet passed the exam; and the National Commission's term "educationally qualified" describes a specialist who has completed dental school and the residency and holds a state license, without board certification.

Even board eligibility, per the American Dental Board of Anesthesiology, requires completed dental education, a license to practice, and a three-year CODA-accredited dental anesthesiology residency — or an equivalent three-year anesthesiology residency.

List certification as a requirement only if you intend to filter on it — in a specialty this size, a hard filter cuts deep.

Quote a pay range with its source behind it.

Our research found no BLS wage series for dental anesthesiology.

Its nearest offices-of-dentists figure is the "Dentists, All Other Specialists" category — a catch-all that includes specialties without their own series, such as endodontists, periodontists and oral pathologists.

In the May 2025 offices-of-dentists data that group counted 2,570 workers with a median annual wage of $224,990, a mean of $285,250, and a middle 50% running from $159,530 to $389,520.

The category is small relative to its spread — ADA HPI counted just 159 dentists in dental anesthesiology among professionally active U.S. dentists in 2025 — so treat those figures as directional context, not as your market rate.

Post a real range for your caseload and model, and say the structure: salary, per-day rate, guarantee, or per-case.

Spell out the schedule and the model.

Days per week, hours, and whether the role is in-house at one location or mobile across several of yours.

The model matters to compliance as much as recruiting.

Texas requires a sedation/anesthesia permit application to state whether the dentist provides the permitted service at more than one location, and a Texas dentist providing sedation at more than one location must make sure each is supplied, equipped, staffed and maintained to the standard of care.

A DEA registration is required separately for each principal place of business where controlled substances are dispensed.

List support staffing too: in Washington, a dental anesthesia assistant may accept delegation only from an oral and maxillofacial surgeon or dental anesthesiologist who holds a valid Washington general anesthesia permit — so there, support staffing for your sedation cases depends on the hire's permit standing.

List benefits and close with an EEO line.

Malpractice coverage and who carries it for anesthesia cases, CE allowance and permit renewal fees, health coverage, PTO, retirement — then your equal-opportunity statement.

For everything a posting cannot carry — screening, comp structure, verifying the permit — our guide to how to hire a dental anesthesiologist picks up where the template ends.

Match the requirements line to your state, not to a template.

The dental license is the baseline requirement — Connecticut, for instance, provides that no person shall engage in the practice of dentistry or dental medicine without a license from the Department of Public Health (Connecticut General Statutes § 20-106) — but sedation and anesthesia authority is layered on top differently from state to state, and those differences decide what your requirements block should say.

California, Montana and West Virginia issue standalone permits.

In California, a dentist needs an active general anesthesia permit — along with a dentist license or board permit — to administer or order deep sedation or general anesthesia on an outpatient basis, and must keep ACLS certification current; a pediatric endorsement on the permit is required to give deep sedation or general anesthesia to patients under 7; the dentist administering or ordering must be physically present in the treatment facility while the patient is under; and for patients under 13 under deep sedation or general anesthesia, the operating dentist and at least two additional personnel must be present throughout (California Business and Professions Code § 1646.1).

In Montana, a deep sedation/general anesthesia permit requires a CODA-accredited oral and maxillofacial surgery or dental anesthesiology residency, recent advanced cardiac life support and an initial office inspection, with a temporary permit available before the inspection.

In West Virginia, when a dentist anesthesiologist provides anesthesia in a dental office, the facility itself must be inspected and approved for a Class 4 permit and the dentist must hold at least a Class 2 permit (West Virginia Code § 30-4A-3(b)).

Vermont, Wisconsin and Michigan attach the authority to the dentist's own credential.

Vermont's board rules require dentists using minimal or moderate sedation to hold a minimal and moderate sedation specialty, and those using deep sedation or general anesthesia to hold a deep sedation and general anesthesia specialty.

Wisconsin dentists who sedate patients hold a Class II – Enteral, Class II – Parenteral or Class III sedation specialty on their dentist credential, issued by DSPS, the state's Department of Safety and Professional Services.

Michigan's rules go hardest on its general dentists: a general dentist without a dental anesthesiology or oral surgery specialty license may not give general anesthesia or deep, moderate or minimal sedation in the office without meeting training and competency requirements — and Michigan may issue a specialty license in dental anesthesiology as a branch of dentistry; a dentist holding that specialty license falls outside the general-dentist restriction above.

The permit vocabulary varies too, which matters when you write the requirement.

The New Jersey State Board of Dentistry issues enteral sedation, parenteral conscious sedation, general anesthesia, local anesthesia and specialty permits in ADA-recognized fields.

Illinois licenses through IDFPR, whose dental professions page lists a Specialty in Dentistry license and a separate Dental Sedation Permit.

Mississippi's licensee search filters for a Dental - Specialty credential.

Name the credential your state actually issues — a requirement written in another state's vocabulary filters out exactly the candidates you want.

If controlled substances are part of the role, DEA adds a federal layer: a separate registration is required for each principal place of business where controlled substances are dispensed; a practitioner practicing in more than one state needs a separate registration in each and must first obtain state authority in each state with an office; and a registration based on one state's license cannot authorize dispensing in another.

One caution before you post: whether your office itself needs a facility permit or inspection when an outside dental anesthesiologist provides anesthesia on site is decided state by state — West Virginia's Class 4 facility approval is one example.

Do not assume the hire's own permit covers your facility; ask your state dental board what your site needs before the first case.

Verify before the first case, then keep the file.

Confirm the dental license with your state board and the sedation permit or specialty designation for the level you hired for, and confirm a DEA registration that covers this location if controlled substances will be dispensed here.

Have specifics ready on case volume, equipment and support staffing, not just pay.

Keep the description you posted.

Under the ADA's essential-functions framework, a written job description prepared before advertising or interviewing applicants is considered evidence of the job's essential functions — one more reason the duties list should say precisely what the role does, and nothing it does not.

Post it where the mechanics are already handled.

This page is the role template; our guide to writing a dental job ad covers the structure, wording and screening questions that apply to any clinical posting, so you only write those once.

And if the anesthesia need arrives with a surgical hire, our oral surgeon job description template does the same job for a surgical specialist.