There’s no doubt that we hygienists are highly trained, college educated dental professionals.  We bring a lot to the table.  Our primary focus in dentistry is prevention, education, and non-surgical periodontics (often times, we know more than the dentist in these areas since he or she has so many other areas to keep up with).…

I’m a big fan of simplicity and have been for a very long time.  I like keeping things to an absolute minimum whenever possible in my life, so naturally that same philosophy extends to my life as a dental hygienist.  In this post, I will share how few instruments I actually use to complete all…

  This is a paper I wrote back in 2009 for a course I was taking at the time (only slightly modified from the original version).  My story of failing the clinical exam, summarized at the beginning of the paper, will be a future podcast topic.  I will go into the story in much more…

All three of the following podcasts have great guests, pump out consistent content, and are available on the popular Stitcher and iTunes apps.  I personally prefer the Stitcher app, but both work very well.  If you don’t know what a podcast is, I’m assuming you’re living off the grid somewhere in Northern Alaska with no…

I came across this interesting study from the National Bureau of Economic Research titled, “Battles Among Licensed Occupations: Analyzing Government Regulations on Labor Market Outcomes for Dentists and Hygienists” (November 2010).  I don’t know how accurate the conclusions are, but I do know one thing for sure.  Any legal effort to make dental hygienists (or…

Because I have an online presence (WordPress blog, YouTube channel, Facebook Page, etc.) with an overall dental theme, I get a lot of dental related questions almost daily.  And because I happen to be a male dental hygienist, some of those questions are from guys who want to be a dental hygienist, but have concerns…

All the current CDT codes that involve debridement (D1110, D4355, D4341, D4342 and D4910) have major flaws and need to be replaced.  I recommend replacing all of them with a single debridement code.  In this post, I will discuss the primary goal of debridement, some of the major flaws with the current codes, and how…

I learned this tip from Lee Emmons, RDH (Designer of the HammerHead suction mirror) Mark Frias, RDH

For us hygienists, there are two common procedures that we do which require excellent evacuation and/or isolation.  They are ultrasonic scaling and placing sealants.  The standard saliva ejector is just not up to the task, but fortunately, there are many better alternatives currently on the market.  The products listed below are organized into three groups.…

Bill the carpenter uses a cordless drill and numerous manual screwdrivers at his worksite.  Unfortunately, he has only one screwdriver bit for the cordless drill, but has 10 manual screwdrivers of various sizes.  Half the time he finds himself using the cordless drill and half the time he finds himself using the manual screwdrivers.  When…