There is no hygiene shortage. Let me give you the real skinny.

Dentists, dental hygienists, and dental assistants are all different careers. Dentists and assistants handle restorative care while hygienists handle preventative care. But unfortunately, dentistry is still archaic in terms of self regulation for hygienists, as compared to nurses and physical therapists, as our careers are different yet hygienists are regulated by a different career field. This is the first thing that makes no sense and hygiene is fighting for self regulation. Secondly, dentists training assistants to scale is asinine. Have you ever had your teeth scaled by a dentist? I’ll be blunt, they don’t know what they’re doing. Scaling being broken down to simply ‘cleaning teeth’ has caused mass misinformation even among dental professionals (dentists) because they have no clue the skills hygienists possess. And dentists in charge of teaching their assistant to scale? There are very few hygienists that will teach the assistant because we overwhelmingly disagree with this crazy ruling. 

OPAs is cutting corners and as health professionals, dentist should be ashamed for advocating this. On the job training by a person that doesn’t possess the skill (dentists), teaching another person that doesn’t have the skill (assistants) to develop the skill? Where is the logic in that?

I mentioned there is no hygiene shortage. There are plenty of hygienists willing to work. So why is it that offices can’t employ hygienists and hygienists rather temp? That’s because, once again, hygienists are licensed professionals in our field yet we have to answer to dentists, and they run on production. This is a conflict of interest many hygienists, including myself, faced. We don’t want to work for crooked dentists, we care about our patients, not production. This leads to many hygienists quitting toxic work environments. Once again, I will reiterate, dentistry and dental hygiene are two different careers, we specialize in different things, and our education is different. Dentists try to control hygienists and we are a profession that knows what we are doing in terms of our preventative dentistry and we typically butt heads with the dentist. They pay us, so we either comply or quit. This made up ‘hygiene shortage’ is due to the fact that hygienist do not want to put up with the BS (pardon my French) anymore. The same happened to me at 2 dental offices and I tempted for over a year because of it. I was readily available for hire, but I’m not going to work at a bad office and let me be frank, many offices are bad. Which is why hygiene needs self regulation, to break free of our employer trying to tell us how to do our jobs when they have no idea what we actually do. We are licensed professionals and we know how to do our jobs. 

As I said before, scaling is a skill taught through vigorous programs. Not only do we scale but we are preventative experts, there is so much more to patient preventative care than a simple scaling. Dentists don’t even know what scalers we use or how we use them, how we keep them sharp, they may have their assistant burnishing tartar without even knowing. 

Instead of cutting corners, which is what this crazy ruling is, dental hygiene should be a self regulated profession. Dental hygiene and nursing are typically female heavy career paths historically regulated by men (doctors). While times are changing, dental hygiene is still behind in this dated regulation. If hygienists regulate their own careers I can assure you it will be evident that there is no ‘hygiene shortage’ just hygienists that won’t put up with the constant BS dentistry gives us (as evidenced by this OPA ruling).

I hope that this comment was actually read and not just a number among the others. Each and every comment and reply from ACTUAL hygienists should be reviewed and considered. Dentists should be our coworkers and collaborators, not our employers. They still try to hold power over us and with this ruling, try to tell us that we aren’t necessary yet beg for our employment. The fight between dentist and hygienists should end with hygiene self regulation. 

Thank you for your time,

Anonymous RDH