By Angela M. Swatts, CDA, EFDA
President, American Dental Assistants Association
As the year ends, it’s always interesting to look forward to your goals for the New Year ... even more rewarding is to reflect on the successes of the year you’re just finishing. And ADAA is finishing a very successful year.
Membership
In the realm of membership, we are happy to report growth when many other professional associations are losing membership and curtailing programs. We are carrying that growth forward to impact other areas as well, but nothing is as important to us as membership.
We need to become and remain a force to be recognized in the dental world and our growing numbers will bring this recognition. Numbers will give us influence with legislators and the media, support from the manufacturers and others in the dental trade, and develop more recognition from those in dentistry and from dental consumers.
What about membership in the New Year? Well, read this column next month and learn all about an exciting new initiative from ADAA to expand our membership in a manner that won’t cost you a penny but will open the door to a whole new professional world.
Benefits
In 2009 we added a discount priced program to help our members with personal identity theft — a growing national problem. We’ve maintained our job board service which includes assistance in resume building, a particularly meaningful benefit in tough economic times, and continued our professional liability coverage for every active member.
Next year we plan to offer a discounted medical service (not health insurance) which could be a supplement for those with insurance or of financial assistance to those who have lost their coverage.
Education
In 2009, we introduced many new and updated continuing education courses in the areas of intraoral functions, treatment of diseases and conditions, radiology, practice management, pharmacology and hazardous materials.
We expanded our offerings of Web-based education and presented our first webinar. We continued our extremely popular Roundtable Education series at many regional dental meetings, and helped make the ADA’s annual session a success with the many presentations we arranged for the dental assisting track.
But, we’re not going to rest on those successes. 2010 will bring courses galore — both new and updated — in all areas of dental assisting interest. They will be available in traditional print format and many are also on the web. All courses are approved for CE credit by the Dental Assisting National Board and most state dental agencies.
Communications
We’ve been pleased to present a fascinating new web site this year, a redesigned Journal, a newly inaugurated newsletter, Business Beat, for dental practice administrators and the 24/7 weekly E -newsletter. We’ve also included a new products review section in the Journal which we will expand in coming issues.
The New Year will see Journal topics such as Going Green, Dental Assisting as a Business, Infection Control, and
Strategies for Professional and Self Improvement. The Journal will also present educational reports and interesting articles from both the Army and Air Force dental assistants, and there will be a variety of topics covered by the business and clinical experts who regularly make the Journal their editorial podium. We also plan to introduce an on-line special edition of the Journal during 2010.
To keep up with social technology, we can now be found on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
So to wrap things up, 2009 concludes on a high note for the ADAA and we hope for all of our members and for those of you who have not quite taken the step to join us yet. Next year we’re going to make it a lot easier for you to become a part of ADAA, and this newsletter and our friends here at PennWell will help to tell you all about it in January. Stay tuned!
Hope the holidays are good for each and every one of you, and that 2010 will be a success as well. Stick with us ... we’re going places in 2010!
ADAA — the people who make dental assisting a profession.
NOTE: To sign up for the ADAA on-line newsletter 24/7 or to request a free subscription to Business Beat, e-mail Nancy Rodriguez at [email protected].