Dental Therapist Job Description Template

Write the description before the job goes up, not after.

A written job description prepared before advertising or interviewing is considered evidence of the job's essential functions, and under the Americans with Disabilities Act the employer's judgment about which functions are essential carries weight — so get the duties on paper first and keep the copy you posted.

Then write the two lines a therapist posting cannot do without.

The first is the practice setting: authorization is state-specific, and in Minnesota, Arizona, Connecticut, Nevada and Wisconsin the statute decides where a therapist may practice, not the employer.

A National Partnership for Dental Therapy count reported by Stateline in July 2024 listed 14 states authorizing dental therapists in at least some settings: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

Name your setting in the posting, after checking it against your state's law.

Minnesota limits dental therapists to primarily practicing in settings that serve low-income, uninsured and underserved patients or a dental health professional shortage area.

Arizona limits them to places such as federally qualified health centers and look-alikes, community health centers, nonprofit practices serving low-income patients, and private practices treating referred community-health-center patients.

Connecticut requires a public health facility.

Nevada restricts practice to listed settings such as hospitals, rural health clinics and FQHC-type facilities.

Wisconsin requires a shortage area, or a setting where at least 50 percent of the patient base is Medical Assistance, uninsured or other listed patients.

The second line is the written agreement.

Minnesota requires a written collaborative management agreement with a Minnesota-licensed dentist before a therapist provides services; Maine builds the role around a written practice agreement under a Maine-licensed dentist's general supervision; Vermont's collaborative agreement must be reviewed, updated and submitted to the Board annually and whenever it changes; Nevada requires a written practice agreement with an authorizing dentist.

The caps belong in your staffing plan: no more than five agreements per dentist in Minnesota, four in Arizona, two in Connecticut, four in Wisconsin.

Draw the duty list from your own state's statute, not a generic template.

Maine's names simple cavity preparations and restorations and simple extractions among the procedures a therapist may perform in limited practice settings under a written practice agreement and general supervision — your state's list is the one that counts.

Write the exclusions too: Minnesota bars its dental therapists from dispensing or administering narcotics and from administering general anesthesia or deep, moderate or minimal sedation; Arizona bars narcotics and independent billing to any individual or third-party payor.

Write the requirements line precisely.

The credential is the state's dental therapist license, plus any permit your state requires alongside it — in Connecticut the therapist must be a licensed dental hygienist, and per the Oral Health Workforce Research Center, New Mexico requires a dental hygiene degree unless the therapist practices in tribal settings.

Arizona requires graduation from a dental therapy program accredited, or holding initial accreditation, by the ADA's Commission on Dental Accreditation, whose standards call for at least three academic years of full-time postsecondary instruction or the equivalent.

Build the team lines around the supervision caps: Maine lets a therapist be delegated supervision of up to 2 dental hygienists and 3 unlicensed persons per practice setting, Michigan caps a therapist at supervising 3 dental assistants and 2 dental hygienists per setting, Arizona requires 1,000 hours under a dentist's direct supervision before the collaborative agreement is signed, Nevada keeps a therapist under direct supervision until 500, 1,000 or 1,500 clinical hours depending on prior licensure and hygiene experience, and Wisconsin allows general supervision only after at least 2,000 hours under direct or indirect supervision.

Where your state requires direct supervision — Arizona's first 1,000 hours, Nevada's first 500 to 1,500 — the dentist's chair time and the therapist's schedule are linked, and the schedule line should say how.

The pay line is yours to construct, because there is nothing to copy: research for this guide found no BLS series and no reliable published pay data for the title.

Decide the range before you post, say whether it is hourly or salaried, state what it is anchored to, and never lift the number out of another state's posting.

Add the benefits block — health coverage, PTO, CE allowance, retirement — and a concrete schedule: days per week, hours, session length.

For the process around the posting, our guide to how to hire a dental therapist covers screening and verification, and the dental therapist career guide shows the role as candidates see it.

Adapting the template to your state.

The bracketed setting, agreement and duty lines are where state law does the talking.

What the authorizing laws this guide draws on say, state by state:

Minnesota — setting: primarily settings that serve low-income, uninsured and underserved patients, or a dental health professional shortage area; agreement: a written collaborative management agreement with a Minnesota-licensed dentist, who may hold no more than five at once; build around: no dispensing or administering narcotics, and no general anesthesia or deep, moderate or minimal sedation.

Maine — setting: limited practice settings, under a Maine-licensed dentist's general supervision; agreement: a written practice agreement; build around: the statute lists simple cavity preparations and restorations and simple extractions, and the therapist may be delegated supervision of up to 2 dental hygienists and 3 unlicensed persons per setting.

Vermont — setting: under the general supervision of a dentist; agreement: a collaborative agreement, reviewed, updated and submitted to the Board annually and whenever it changes; build around: name the collaborating dentist in the posting.

Arizona — setting: federally qualified health centers and look-alikes, community health centers, nonprofit practices serving low-income patients, and private practices treating referred community-health-center patients; agreement: a collaborative practice agreement, entered only after 1,000 hours of clinical practice under a dentist's direct supervision, with no more than four per dentist; build around: graduation from a CODA-accredited or initially accredited program, no narcotics and no independent billing.

Michigan — scope: listed services under a dentist's supervision; build around: the therapist may not supervise more than 3 dental assistants and 2 dental hygienists per practice setting (MCL 333.16656, effective March 27, 2019).

Connecticut — setting: a public health facility, under a dentist's general supervision; agreement: a collaborative agreement, with no more than two per dentist, and the dentist is professionally responsible and legally liable for the therapist's authorized services; build around: the therapist must be a licensed dental hygienist.

Nevada — setting: only listed settings, such as hospitals, rural health clinics and FQHC-type facilities; agreement: a written practice agreement with an authorizing dentist; build around: direct supervision until 500, 1,000 or 1,500 clinical hours, depending on prior licensure and hygiene experience.

Wisconsin — setting: a dental health shortage area, or a setting where at least 50 percent of the patient base is Medical Assistance, uninsured or other listed patients; agreement: collaborative management agreements, with no more than four per dentist; build around: general supervision only after at least 2,000 hours under direct or indirect supervision.

Alaska and New Mexico also appear in the Stateline-listed count, and the training pipeline is concentrated: per the Oral Health Workforce Research Center (March 2025), established dental therapy education programs existed in Alaska, Minnesota and Washington, while Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin and Vermont were still developing them.

If there is no program in your state, you may be hiring someone trained or licensed elsewhere.

Do not recycle a posting across state lines — authorization, settings and supervision limits are state-specific, and a template that travels will misstate the job in one of the states.

For the parts of the posting that do not change with the role — the first lines, how specific to be about pay, the credentials to list — our guide to writing a dental job ad covers the frame.

And if your state does not authorize dental therapy, the seat you are filling is a hygiene seat: start from our dental hygienist job description instead of stretching this one.

Verify the license before the first shift, not after.

Each state keeps its own record: Michigan's LARA lookup, Vermont's Board of Dental Examiners, Maine's Board of Dental Practice, Washington DOH, Wisconsin's DSPS, the Nevada board, the Oregon Board of Dentistry's online verification system and Colorado's licensing roster all carry the dental therapist credential, and Idaho's dental rules cover dental therapists alongside dentists, specialists and hygienists.

Nevada treats failure to verify a dental therapist's license before offering employment as unprofessional conduct for a practice owner — hold yourself to that standard everywhere.

File the agreement wherever your state requires it — Vermont's goes to the Board annually and on any change — and keep the signed original with the license record.

Keep the posting too: the version you advertised against documents the job's essential functions, so when the agreement, duty list or schedule changes, post the update and keep both copies.