# RDA exam practice questions: Patient information and assessment Five original RDA exam practice questions on patient information and assessment, each answered on this page with a rationale and a source. Last updated: 2026-07-25. ## Question 1 An RDA uses a cuff that is clearly too small for a large-armed patient. What effect does that error have on the reading? - A. The reading will be falsely high. - B. The reading will be falsely low. - C. Only the diastolic number will be affected. - D. Cuff size affects comfort but not accuracy. **Answer A:** The reading will be falsely high. A cuff that is too small for the arm reads falsely high; a cuff that is too large reads falsely low. **Common trap:** remember the direction — "small cuff, big number" — and note that an arm held below heart level also reads high. Source: Bird DL, Robinson DS. Modern Dental Assisting. Current edition, Elsevier — the standard clinical dental-assisting reference used for Areas 1–3… ## Question 2 A patient is scheduled for a procedure expected to cause gum bleeding. Her history lists a prosthetic (artificial) heart valve, and the chart shows the dentist prescribed antibiotic premedication at the last visit. While seating her, the RDA learns she forgot to take the dose this morning. What should the RDA do? - A. Proceed with seating and setup, because one missed dose of prophylaxis is not clinically significant. - B. Give the patient a dose from the office's stock of amoxicillin so that today's appointment can start on time. - C. Inform the dentist immediately, before treatment begins, that the prescribed premedication was not taken. - D. Call the patient's physician directly to ask whether today's appointment may proceed without antibiotic coverage. **Answer C:** Inform the dentist immediately, before treatment begins, that the prescribed premedication was not taken. Antibiotic premedication prevents infective endocarditis in the highest-risk cardiac categories, and a prosthetic heart valve is one of them. The assistant's operational duty is verification — confirm the patient actually took the prescribed dose before treatment starts and alert the dentist if not. Selecting, supplying, or prescribing the drug is impossible for any assisting category, because prescribing medication is on the never-delegable list in the Dental Practice Act. **Common trap:** Option B feels efficient and even helpful, but handing a patient a drug is prescribing/administering territory the statute closes to assistants. Option A has the assistant making a clinical judgment about significance — that judgment is the dentist's. Option D routes around the dentist; unclear cases go from the dentist to the physician, never from the assistant. Source: [California Business & Professions Code §1750.1 — basic supportive dental procedures delegable to dental assistants (general- vs direct-supervision…](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1750.1.&lawCode=BPC) ## Question 3 A dental assisting student studying from a 2019 prep chart tells you that every patient with a total knee replacement must take antibiotics before dental cleaning. A patient on today's schedule has a knee replacement, no cardiac history, and no premedication noted anywhere in the chart. What is the correct understanding? - A. All joint-replacement patients require antibiotic prophylaxis indefinitely, so the appointment must be rescheduled. - B. Routine antibiotic coverage is not called for in most prosthetic-joint patients; the dentist decides unclear cases. - C. The RDA may proceed only after telephoning the patient's orthopedic surgeon and documenting the clearance. - D. Joint-replacement patients need premedication only for the first two years, so the RDA should calculate the date and decide. **Answer B:** Routine antibiotic coverage is not called for in most prosthetic-joint patients; the dentist decides unclear cases. Premedication is condition-specific, not a blanket rule; the highest-risk categories are prosthetic heart valves or prosthetic valve-repair material, a previous episode of infective endocarditis, certain serious congenital heart disease, and cardiac transplant patients with valve problems. Routine coverage for most patients with prosthetic joints is no longer generally recommended, and questionable cases go from the dentist to the patient's physician. Deciding whether coverage is needed is diagnostic judgment the statute reserves to the dentist. **Common trap:** This is a classic stale-prep item — the "all joints, forever" and "first two years" rules circulate widely in older assisting materials and dated study guides. Options C and D are also traps of a second kind: both have the assistant obtaining clearance or applying a rule independently, which is the dentist's call regardless of what the guideline says. Source: [California Business & Professions Code §1750.1 — basic supportive dental procedures delegable to dental assistants (general- vs direct-supervision…](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1750.1.&lawCode=BPC) ## Question 4 A returning patient's chart shows a latex allergy noted at her first visit three years ago. She is booked for a 3:00 p.m. restorative appointment, and the tray has already been set with standard gloves and a rubber dam. What is the best response? - A. Proceed with the tray as set up, because an allergy documented three years ago may no longer be current. - B. Re-confirm the allergy with the patient and convert to a latex-safe setup: non-latex gloves and non-latex dam. - C. Keep the latex rubber dam but switch to non-latex gloves, since only direct skin contact provokes a reaction. - D. Ask the patient to take an antihistamine before the appointment and continue with the tray as it is set up. **Answer B:** Re-confirm the allergy with the patient and convert to a latex-safe setup: non-latex gloves and non-latex dam. Latex is the headline dental-material allergen and can appear in gloves, rubber dam, and prophy cups, with reactions ranging from contact dermatitis to life-threatening anaphylaxis. The sensitive patient gets a fully latex-safe setup, and standard references recommend early-in-the-day scheduling, when less airborne latex protein has accumulated from glove use. The health history is a living document re-confirmed at every visit, and every reported allergy is checked against the materials on today's tray before anything touches the patient. **Common trap:** Option C is the most tempting because it half-solves the problem — but the rubber dam is a major latex source sitting directly against the mucosa. Option A treats the history as a one-time intake form rather than something updated and dated at every visit. Option D has the assistant recommending a drug, which is outside every assisting category. Source: [California Business & Professions Code §1750.1 — basic supportive dental procedures delegable to dental assistants (general- vs direct-supervision…](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1750.1.&lawCode=BPC) ## Question 5 The supervising dentist steps out to a nearby bank during the lunch hour and instructs the RDA to seat the next patient and take her blood pressure and pulse. This dentist has not designated vital signs as a direct-supervision procedure under BPC §1752.4(d). What is the correct analysis? - A. Permissible: an RDA takes vital signs under general supervision, needing no dentist presence. - B. Permissible: vital signs are clerical intake work carrying no supervision requirement at all. - C. Not permissible: vital signs are direct-supervision work, so the dentist must be in the facility. - D. Not permissible: taking vital signs is never delegable to any dental assisting category. **Answer A:** Permissible: an RDA takes vital signs under general supervision, needing no dentist presence. An RDA's authority to take vital signs comes from BPC §1752.4(a)(1), "all duties that a dental assistant is allowed to perform." Subdivision (a) duties are performed "under general supervision and pursuant to the order, control, and full professional responsibility of a licensed dentist," the Board's Table of Permitted Duties effective January 1, 2025 marks the §1752.4(a) rows G in the RDA column, and the stem expressly negates a §1752.4(d) determination — so ordinary extraoral vital signs are answerable here. Do not generalize that to every inherited duty: for the (a)(1) tier the current sources are not fully harmonized, and in January 2026 Board staff formally identified the inconsistency, with the Dental Assisting Council's working group agreeing that matrix work, post-extraction-dressing removal, periodontal-dressing removal, and suture removal should be direct for both DAs and RDAs — a legislative proposal, not current law (registry row B10). General supervision means the work rests on the dentist's instructions without requiring physical presence (BPC §1741(l)), so the standing instruction here is sufficient. Because the stem states that this dentist has made no §1752.4(d) determination raising the procedure to direct supervision, the general-supervision default controls. **Common trap:** Option C is the error that runs through most circulating RDA prep: it reads the unlicensed dental assistant's rule — BPC §1750.1(b), which genuinely is the direct-supervision list — and applies it to a licensed RDA. For a DA, C would be right. Option B overcorrects in the other direction: general supervision is still supervision, and the dentist's order and full professional responsibility never lapse. Option D is simply false; vitals are delegable to every assisting category. Watch for the version of this stem that adds a §1752.4(d) determination — that fact, and only that fact, moves the answer to C. Source: [California Business & Professions Code §1752.4 — RDA duties and supervision levels. Subdivision (a) lists the RDA's duties, performed "under general…](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1752.4.&lawCode=BPC) ## Next step [Take the free 15-question practice test](https://dentovio.com/rda/free-practice-test) Official reference: [Dental Board of California RDA Combined Written and Law and Ethics Examination Outline](https://www.dbc.ca.gov/formspubs/rda_exam_outline.pdf). Original exam-style questions written for study, never recalled exam content. Independent educational preparation, not legal or clinical advice, and not affiliated with or endorsed by the Dental Board of California or PSI. Confirm current requirements with the Dental Board of California.