Anyone a Dental Hygienist? What do you Love/Hate About it?
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I was a Dental Assistant for many years before finially deciding on Dental Hygiene.
There are pros and cons.
The pros:
--- GREAT money. In my state (MIssouri) the range is $25-35 an hour. If you have kids you can work part time. I only work 2 days a week and still get a pretty good pay check.
----You get to work one on one with patients. What I like is the patient education. Teaching people how to care for their teeth and many after your training come back next time with a healthier mouth is rewarding to me. You also get to meet interesting people. So you must be outgoing to be a Dental Hygienist in my opinion.
---It's very interesting. In my state we can give injections, do scaling and root planing and place medicaments where needed. I find this very interesting.
The cons;
-----Little to no benefits. It's hard to find DR's who'll give benefits. Some DR's when you have a patient cancel at the beginning or end of the day send you home-no work, no pay.
-----Many Hygienists get burn out after about 5 years. Some say the DR pushes them to do more patients in less time and this gets frustrating. I was burned out until I went part time. I couldn't do this more that 20 hours a week and still love it. It's tempting to work more cause the money.
---the schooling is VERY HARD. You can get an associate degree with about 3 years education. LOTS of science, anatomy ect. Then you have to take a national exam 1 day, a clinical exam another day (you have to find a certain kind of patient on your own) and a practical exam. LOTS of STRESS!!!
---there is always a chance your state will change the law and allow minimal training to be a dental Hygienist. This has happened in 2 states that I know-Kansas and Mississippi. The only thing that happened right away was salaries went down $5 an hour!
In my opinion if you think you can work part time then Dental Hygiene is a wonderful, fulfilling, respected profession.
Jeanmarie RDH
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