Message Boards
Today's Active Topics Browse Forum Categories My Recent Activity My Messages Private Groups My Marked Threads My Subscriptions
Today's Active Images Today's Active Polls Most Active Topics Global Townie Map Advanced Message Board Search Message Board Terms of Use

From Scaling to Therapy: A Day in the Life of a Dental Hygienist Trish Walraven, RDH, BS

View Comments (3) More by this author (2)


You're at a gathering and sooner or later you know that the dreaded question will be asked.

"So, what do you do?"

No hesitation here. You know what your profession is. You have a title, a position, a calling. But you weren't asked about your job title. You were asked, "What do you do?"

When most people hear that you're a dentist or hygienist, you encounter a full disregard of the art and compassion that you put into your profession. People want to tell you about their bad experiences as a child or how much they hate you (but don't take it personally!) They just nod at your response and change the subject.

You steer the dialogue back to the original question and the feel-good answer you've prepared: "I take care of people's teeth."

This response elicits a smile of comfort and familiarity from your obligatory small-talk partner. The conversation can move forward now that your profession has been deemed socially acceptable.

An hour later, driving home, you're blissfully alone with your thoughts, rewinding your earlier social interactivity, musing over the highlights and you ask yourself in hindsight, "What do I do?"

I can't speak for dentists, but if you're a dental hygienist, you do some pretty strange things, actually.

First of all, perfection to you is wave-shaped. It's the curve of a thin scallop of attached pinkness that anoints each interproximal space with a coral-tipped point of the healthiest gingiva imaginable. Anything less than this in your patients' mouths is limbo. Chaos is the reason your job exists, but you always hunger for order and balance. To achieve this imagined perfection in a mouth that is not optimal means you often resort to some diversions along the way.

How do you handle the patient whose lower anterior linguals are piled with a couple of grams of Grade A calcium phosphate? Sure, you could just chunk the calculus off. But sometimes, when you're feeling a little dastardly, you carve out the top and the bottom of the tartar evenly, so that you've left a neat chalky white mustache, complete with curlicues. With artistic satisfaction, you turn your attention back to your duty and politely erase the Banksy-esque dental graffiti from your patient's teeth.

This is not something you tell people that you do.

You also keep it to yourself that your deepest fear is running into anything artificial while you're cleaning someone's teeth. Your ultrasonic scaler turns into a fierce lead pencil in those situations, which means that not only are you wearing down your precious metal antennae into useless nubs, but you're also leaving dark lines where there was once only whiteness. Every last bit of old orthodontic cement has now been revealed like a charcoal rubbing, thanks to you. And you would never admit to leaving a grey streak on a brand-new porcelain crown. How could you slip like that? You hope like heck that the prophy paste will get that line off before anyone notices.

When it comes to things that you enjoy, there's a bit of hesitation about sharing those stories as well. For instance, when you're hovering around the periapical abscess that's begging to be relieved? Or when you're spraying baking soda slurry under a bridge and the patient becomes aware that its odor speaks more than the thousand words that you could ever say about superfloss? To you, the stink is like scoring a point. Or why your trophy at the end of a particularly difficult appointment is a 2x2 gauze loaded with something that looks like a buckshot, but is really your patient's carefully extracted calculus? Fun times.

Probably the most difficult part of your career, though, has to do with patient management. Unless you're regularly disengaging people from their mouths via nitrous oxide, there are forceful tongues, lip pulls, saliva ropes, and people who forget that it's safe to swallow their own saliva. And how do you convince patients that unless they just ate a handful of almonds, brushing immediately before their dental appointment won't make your task any easier?

Then there are the patients themselves. Not just their mouths, but the whole person (patients whose embarrassment about their teeth is the reason they haven't been to a dentist in a while). These are people who not only open their mouths but open up to you, tell you their secrets, their fears, their wishes and hopes. People who trust you to take care of them and nurture them toward health. They see something special in your eyes and they open wide.

So go ahead and make it known out there in the big world that you're a hygienist. Or a dentist. You scale teeth. You drill teeth. No biggie. That's what you do. What really matters, though, are the reasons why.


TRISH'S TOP SCALING TIPS

  • Biofilm removal is an important part of a professional cleaning, and power scalers are the best tool for this job.
  • Have a pair of super-thin ultrasonic tips (left and right curved) in each setup. Straight ones are for extremely thick calculus only! Be sure to discard once they have worn down to the appearance of a posterior curette.
  • Don't be afraid to use the ultrasonic on a child. If they have calculus, they'll probably be more comfortable with the "eraser" than with the hard pressure of hand scaling.
  • It's okay to use a down stroke into the sulcus. Just keep your touch light, and you'll find that your ultrasonic and hand-scaling efficiency skyrockets.
  • Stick to your route around the mouth even when performing gum-disease therapy. Having a fixed start point and a fixed end point means that you will be more thorough and consistent.
  • Your patients will prefer power tools over hand scaling if you are careful with root surfaces.
  • Stop beating yourself up with curettes and try posterior sickle scalers like the Nevi 3 or the Montana Jack. Heaven!
  • Singing will often drown out the sound of the ultrasonic if a patient is uncomfortable with its pitch. Do not attempt this unless you've been told that people enjoy your voice.
  • Get a headlight! You'll be surprised at how much time you'll save not having to adjust the overhead light and how everything in the mouth is shadow-free.



Trish Walraven graduated from Texas Woman's University and lives and works in the Dallas area. She has been in full-time clinical practice for more than 20 years, is the co-developer of BlueNote Communicator intra-office dental software, and is a writer and editor of DentalBuzz.com, a humor and dental trends website.


Sponsors
Site Menu
Message Boards Articles Continuing Education Podcasts Blogs Classifieds News Events Townie® Poll Ebooks Townie Choice Awards
Company Info
Contact Us Advertise With Us Howard Farran DDS, MBA Policies and Agreements
Site Help
Sally Gross, Member Services Specialist
Phone: +1-480-445-9710
Email: sally@farranmedia.com
©2024 Hygienetown, a division of Farran Media • All Rights Reserved
9633 S. 48th Street Suite 200 • Phoenix, AZ 85044 • Phone:+1-480-598-0001 • Fax:+1-480-598-3450