How to get started on one of the nations hottest jobs: Career as a Dental Hygienist

Bleeding Gums School: Part dentist, part dominator, the dental hygienist tends to your teeth. The profession behind the pain.
   
“You’re going to need to improve your home care,” she said through a blue paper mask. “There’s lots of bleeding.”

Of course there’s bleeding, I think. You’re scraping my gums away with a metal pick.

I cringe and grip the chair’s handles as she continues to scrape, probably encouraged by my feebly muttered, although nearly incompressible, “mmm-hmm.” I feel sharp pain as the tool gouges my gum. Instantly, my eyes well up with tears, and I can feel the warm, salty blood in my mouth. But not for long: she sucks it away. I watch as the straw-shaped vacuum turns crimson with my blood-tainted saliva.

I’m at the dentist’s office. Twice yearly, many of us trudge reluctantly to sterile offices, where we wait for minutes to half-hours after our scheduled appointment times, minding the wait but never saying anything. Then we lie there and pretend to make conversation even though our mouths are wide open and full of sucking, scraping tools that are causing us indescribable pain.

After the hygienist is done pulling at the hardened bits of whatever on my teeth, I’m instructed to rinse. I do, and spit pieces of my shredded gums into the porcelain bowl’s swirling water. Then there’s the polishing of my tender teeth, which is definitely better than the scraping but still uncomfortable. After I leave, new toothbrush and floss in hand, my mouth hurts, but gradually, it feels better. And then good, clean and healthy. How bizarre.

Not as bizarre, however, as our collective willingness to pay people to make us wait, tear our mouth apart and then berate us. In the name of oral health, we turn masochistic. And, maybe unbelievably, we go back, year after year, for more pain and discomfort.

Maybe the healing saltwater rinses have just made me slightly bitter. Maybe I could have avoided all that with an extra minute scrubbing of my teeth, or a little more effort pulling floss between my teeth. It can’t be fun staring into neglected, bleeding mouths all day, so the lecturing is understandable, if sometimes obnoxious and condescending. I know I floss daily — if maybe inadequately — so telling me I don’t isn’t going to do much except make me defensive and bitter.

Dentists use these professionals — hygienists — to clean our mouths before they look at them. Hygienists ostensibly get paid to compensate for our slacking oral care. They get to poke and scrape and polish, converse with people who have their mouths wide open and full of equipment, and then instruct patients about something they should have learned years ago. What a great job, huh? That’s not exactly on my list of things I want to do post-graduation.

But that is on U.S. News’ “hot jobs” list. Hygienists, in all their scraping glory, hold $22-an-hour positions that are more necessary than ever as dentists turn their attention to surgery and more complex procedures. As members of one of the fastest growing professions, hygienists typically have associate degrees, which you can get from community colleges or vocational schools.

In roughly two years, they’ll teach you how to “perform dental prophylactic treatments and instruct groups and individuals in the care of the teeth and mouth,” according to the Career InfoNet database. In layperson’s terms, that’s how to scrape and yell. And you’ll probably have to physically go to school: those Sally Struthers-type video correspondence schools won’t teach you how to scrape plaque and espouse the merits of flossing daily.

So why do people want to be hygienists, considering the bad raps they get? Sarah J, a hygienist-in-training at the Rural Health Dental Clinic, says she enrolled because she wanted to do something related to health other than nursing. She’s in her second year at the Menomonie, Wisc. school and under the direct supervision of a dentist and registered hygienist she performs “cleanings, X-rays, oral exams [and] patient ed.”

Patient education would be the part I’d hate: the never-ending nagging about daily flossing and thorough brushing. People like me get annoyed, Johnson, 24, said, because she and other hygienists “do care about our patients and we are persistent about telling our patients about good oral care.”

With my experiences in the chair, I was surprised to learn that vindictiveness and meanness aren’t prerequisites for the job; it’s probably just misinterpreted concern. I’m guessing that with people like me, patience is probably the most important virtue, since our failure at performing kindergarten-level tasks makes their jobs hell. Johnson knows that it can grate on nerves: “People get turned off sometimes — they get sick of hearing it,” she said.

Next time, I’m going to preempt the agony by flossing twice a day and brushing religiously after every bite of food.

Starting tomorrow.

Related Links:

1. American Dental Association page on Dental Hygienist

2. Wikipedia Article on a career as a Dental Hygienist

3. American Dental Hygienist Association

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