Job Responsibilities
Phone management, Customer service, Monitoring daily appoinment
space, scheduling appointments, taking payments, consulting with
government departments regarding government funded schemes,
managing debt collection, managing mail sorting, managing rosters
and staff rotations, calculating hours for pay benefits,
organising travel itineries. Managing weekly, monthly and yearly
summaries of income reports. Assisting as a dental assistant when
needed.
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Job Requirements
Requires good customer service skills, a knowledge of basic
dentistry is a plus, understanding a range of different "Microsoft
Office" programmes in expected as well as knowledge of the used
dental software. A sound typing speed of 60 words per minute with
good accuracy as well as high level of grammatical knowledge and a
knowledge of different filing systems is an advantage. An
understanding of the way private and government health insurance
is a plus. I started out as a dental assistant and then
gradually started assisting with some administrative and clerical
work in the practce. In the five years working as a dental nurse
I studied for a year and completed my Certificate III in Dental
Assisting at an evening Technical school. After 5 years of
nursing I started working full time in the clerical/administrative
area of the practice. I have know completed a Certificate IV in
Small Business Management, which I studied through a distance
learning centre, which makes me highly qualified for the position
I am in, although experience alone can make you qualified for the
position.
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Uppers
Helping people who are in pain to find pain relief.
Communicating and interacting with a range of people.
Knowing that my skills are helping a health centre run efficiently and watching
the practice grow not only in numbers of patients but also financially.
Once you have been in one practice for a number of years the regular patients
become almost like and extended friendship group.
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Downers
It can be quite stressful, expecially if you have 4 or more people
waiting for you to serve them. You often get the occasional
offensive client. It can be very frustrating when dealing with
the government health departments for funding. Debt collecting
can be a rather tedious job.
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Lifestyle
Do not take a jobe as receptionist/clerical assistant etc if you
think it is all chat and polishing nails, cause it certainly
isn't. You will be asked at numerous times to do 5 things at once
and expected to do them all correctly so it can be very
stressfull. On the other hand, if you love talking to people,
comforting people and have a general love of human interaction,
this job is perfect. Always remember that you will occasionally
get some rude/abusive clients so make sure that you are able to
let these go in one ear and out the other, because if you take all
abuse personally, you wont last a month.
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Compensation
My base salary is $32,000 a year. Included in this is free minor
dental and at cost major dental (for example if I needed a crown I
would only be charged the laboratory fee so the company is not out
of pocket). There is a compulsory superanuation contribution
which can be increased by extra payments made from your salary,
all of which are a tax deduction. We also get discount rates for
Physio and Podiatry, but work will cover these if the injury is
due to a work related injury. As the practice is privately owned
by the dentist, there are no set bonuses,however at the end of the
year or during the year if we have been having to do more work
than usual the boss will add a bonus to our pays, on top of our
overtime.
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Advice to Jobseekers
Do not take a jobe as receptionist/clerical assistant etc if you
think it is all chat and polishing nails, cause it certainly
isn't. You will be asked at numerous times to do 5 things at once
and expected to do them all correctly so it can be very
stressfull. On the other hand, if you love talking to people,
comforting people and have a general love of human interaction,
this job is perfect. Always remember that you will occasionally
get some rude/abusive clients so make sure that you are able to
let these go in one ear and out the other, because if you take all
abuse personally, you wont last a month.
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