Any advice from someone getting their degree in Dental Hygiene?

I am getting my Associates Degree/Allied Health %26amp; Nursing. I am interested in Dental Hygiene, yet a little skeptical.....I hope to get some feedback...





Thanks!

Any advice from someone getting their degree in Dental Hygiene?
There are true advantages to being a hygienist. We have better hours than nurses, yet usually we don't have medical coverage that nurses have. However we have access to basically free dentistry which can be very expensive if you need a lot of work done to your mouth. I too started out in the nursing area, but decided to change my major as I did not want to work in a hospital setting. I would not have minded working in a doctors office, or day surgery but you basically have to start out in a hospital to get experience. I found that this was not for me. Actually the nursing program and the hygiene program are pretty close in what you need class wise. The differences come when you actually start taking your clinical classes. I had to have the same exact core classes that the registered nurses have to have, but then when I got to hygiene school is when things were different. I had to have anatomy 1 and 2, microbiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, medical terminology, head and neck anatomy, periodontics, oral pathology, infectious diseases, infection control, anesth. (it is legal in my state for me to give injections), the list goes on,.......The good thing about nursing is that many times some areas are so short of nurses that many hospitals will give sign on bonuses. Hygiene for me was the way to go, I have great hours, no weekends, I work three days a week from eight to five, and the other two days from eight to twelve noon. I have my own schedule with my own book and have a lot of autonomy until the doc has to come in to do the exam. There is no one looking over my shoulder so to speak. I get to build a relationship with my patients and help them with their oral health. I make excellent money, without having to work crazy hours, like many times nurses will have to work a twelve hour shift at night, this was also not for me. I am a morning person and would hate a twelve hour shift. Many people ask me how can you look in people's mouths all day, well there is more to it than that. Every person is different, no two are ever the same. Hygiene is always different and while I do clean teeth I also can give injections, take x-rays, screen for oral cancer and other problems related to the mouth which is related to the whole body. Help people understand the importance of their teeth and oral health and how it can relate to disease in other parts of their body. I take blood pressures, and pulse, I go over medical history and have to know what medications are what, and if any of these medications interact with anything that we use in dentistry. I have to make sure that the patient does not have any life threatening allergies, such as a latex allergy, or an allergy to penicillin for example. We have to make sure that they don't have any signs of oral cancer if say they are a heavy smoker or dipper (or not) we counsel on nutrition, and what foods are the worst for you. We can counsel people to help them quit smoking and give them advice and smoking cessation aids to help them reach their goal. We counsel the diabetic patient as how important it is to keep the bacterial counts down in their mouth, because these bacteria can move else where in the body and cause infections, which to a diabetic person that has a low immune response can be critical. We talk about periodontal disease and how the bacteria that cause perio disease can also affect the heart and lung function, by infecting the heart and giving someone infective endocarditis. so see there are many aspect to dental hygiene that people really do not think about, many people think that we only clean teeth, but this is not true, we have to know a whole lot about the whole body, because we can tell so much about a person's health by only looking in their mouth. If you like health care, but don't want to be a nurse hygiene may be for you. If you attend a school that has a hygiene program as well make an appointment to have your teeth cleaned by one of the student dental hygienists. Believe me they are always looking for patients, and you can get your teeth cleaned and really see what hygiene is about. Many times they will have you in their chair for two hours at a time, so this will give you time to observe and ask questions about this career. It is not for everybody, so do some research. An outgoing personality really helps if you want to go into the hygiene field. This could also be said for nursing as well. Good luck on whatever career you decide to choose. However know that hygiene school is tough, harder than I could have ever imagined. Having to learn all of the bacteria in perio class is enough to make you pause and wonder what the heck was I thinking.





Some of them:


Bacterioids Forsythus


Prevatella Intermedia


Porphormonous Gingivalis


My least fave one, took me forever to spell:





Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitan ahh try to say that fast three times over.