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Hygiene Hotspot: Becoming a Dental Hygienius
BECOMING A DENTAL HYGIENIUS
By: Nancy Miller, RDH, BSDH
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When I started my career as a dental hygienist I had to know how to “pick and flick” teeth clean with single-ended hand instruments and polish with a belt-and-pulley lowspeed handpiece engine that usually got my hair caught in the belts. Radiograph films were wrapped in lead foil and paper and exposed, then unwrapped and developed in a darkroom with chemical dip tanks. Crowns were a $150 investment to the patient and made mostly of gold. Amalgam, tiny alloy pellets combined with drops of mercury and mixed in a Wig-L-Bug, comprised the predominant restorative material. I could offer one variety of electric toothbrush, the Broxodent, and it really was electric and plugged into the wall outlet! My, how things have changed!
Today’s dental hygienist needs to evolve into what I and others have called a Dental Hygienius to gain career satisfaction and fully contribute to a practice. Hygienists are usually the team members that spend the most time with the patients, and they are great at patient education, and explaining dental conditions and treatments. Hygiene services have evolved due to digitalization and power, and because of the expansion of the overall oralsystemic health link knowledge base. Learning what’s available in clinical treatment techniques that can deliver care in a more efficient and timely manner can increase the practice’s bottom line as well as the hygienist's job satisfaction. Expanding hygienists’ overall knowledge of the business aspects of a dental practice gives them more ability to educate their patients to move forward with any recommended treatment. Involving all the team members in the hygiene department increases the chance for continuity and success.
I am pleased to be invited to present at the Oklahoma Dental Association’s Annual Meeting in Tulsa on Friday, April 28. I will be offering two courses based on my many years of experience and practice that will help create Dental Hygieniuses and great hygiene departments. The morning course, Power Off Biofilm, focuses on clinical skill enhancement via power instrumentation. Increasing efficacy and discovering what you may be missing in new techniques in biofilm removal will be the focus, and as this is geared toward clinical skills, it is attractive to hygienists and dentists. Air polishing has been around for three decades, but its use was generally restricted to supragingival stain removal. Like ultrasonics with micro tips, their use with finersize powder particles is evolving into the next treatment modality for periodontal therapy. What do you need to know about this latest technological application? How can you incorporate it into your clinical routine? While micro ultrasonics are now considered standard of care in periodontal therapy, what else are you using them for? What technological advances have there been since you were in school or your last CE course? Is there really a difference between piezoelectric technology and magnetostrictive units? Are there any new inserts on the market? Is there any superior way to adapt ultrasonic instruments to the type of patient in your chair? Objectives of the course include: • Biofilm’s role in inflammatory disease • The latest in types of ultrasonic inserts and airflow technique • Using both technologies on healthy (not just perio patients ) • Implant maintenance and peri-mucositis treatment
• An ergonomic and “time-economic” instrumentation sequence The afternoon offering, Calculated Hygiene: The Business Side, emphasizes that the hygiene team is more than the hygienists; it includes support from the business team, restorative clinical team, and dentist. In order to gain “case acceptance” from the patient and to calculate the hygiene team’s effectiveness, the whole team must understand the total hygiene department's mission and objectives. Your hygiene department should be the force moving the rest of your practice forward. It’s calculated that approximately 60% of the productivity in the doctor’s treatment room comes from the hygiene room. Calculating how to keep the hygiene department running smoothly and efficiently will ensure that the practice has a healthy, long life. Calculating optimum productivity requires understanding “the numbers” and what they mean in terms of care delivered to your patients. Objectives of this Calculated Hygiene course include: • Performance benchmarks to assess department efficiency • Increasing current knowledge of dental disease/disorders
• Technological assistance in efficient delivery of care • Increasing treatment acceptance via case presentation skills • Increasing patient understanding of dental benefit plans • Patient retention strategies for longlasting relationships • How to implement a hygiene assistant for optimum utilization of dental hygienists These courses will demonstrate how to create a productive and creative dental hygiene department to maximize its contributions to a practice. Please join me at the Annual
Meeting in Tulsa for a fun and enlightening day of strategies on becoming a Dental Hygienius or helping manage one. See you there!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nancy Miller is a practicing dental hygienist with over 45 years of clinical experience, 15 in a periodontal practice. She currently practices one day weekly with a general dentist in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1992, Nancy began her own consulting and lecture business, ultraconcepts. She presents lectures and hands-on courses on topics such as Ultrasonic instrumentation, air polishing for biofilm removal, ergonomics, assisted hygiene, and the business side of dental hygiene. A dental practice management advisor with Jameson Management of OKC since 1998, she specializes in clinical department coordination with the business team and corporate relationships. A former Oral B Advisory Board member, she was one of Modern Dental Network's 25 Top Women in Dentistry for 2016. She is also a key opinion leader and product evaluator for several manufacturers, including Hu-Friedy Group and Crown Seating, and is a panelist on the Cellerant Group for Best of Class Hygiene Awards that debuted in 2021.
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OKLAHOMA HEALTH PROFESSIONALS PROGRAM
Since 1983, the Oklahoma Health Professionals Program (OHPP) has provided services to over 1,000 physicians and health care providers with alcohol and chemical dependence. OHPP is an outreach program designed to support and monitor medical and allied health professionals throughout Oklahoma who are experiencing difficulty with substance abuse.
The OHPP continues to be a leader nationally in identifying problems, assisting in treatment, and returning to practice health care professionals who have suffered from substance abuse or dependency.
OHPP services are confidential and include expert consultation and intervention designed to encourage health care professionals to seek help for substance abuse and behavioral concerns.
When an individual contacts the OHPP about a health care professional or about himself or herself, the director or designated associate director assesses the situation and assists in guiding the health care professional.
Participation with OHPP is voluntary and confidential. OHPP will strongly urge a professional who is ill to get help, and although OHPP does not provide direct treatment, we will suggest specific treatment options. We respond to the concerns of families, colleagues, and hospitals by providing coordinated interventions and referrals to treatment.
In addition, OHPP hosts a number of support group meetings open to all health care professionals, students, residents in recovery as well as those seeking peer support.
OHPP recognizes the difficulty of reporting a colleague who may be impaired. Because of the potential risk to patient care, OHPP encourages medical professionals to make referrals if a problem exists, no matter how long there has been a problem.
