Stuck in the Hygiene Rut?!
I found myself two years into my hygiene career not loving it. Have you been there? Are you there right now?! You are not alone! For me, I was working 5-6 days a week, long hours, no assistant with double or accelerated hygiene. I would get asked to work through lunch or stay an hour late to accommodate a new patient. I was new to the hygiene world and the market for hygiene was so different! There were not a lot of hygiene opportunities and I felt as if there was not another option other than sticking it out, proving myself and just pushing through. Heck, I had made it through dental hygiene school, so I knew I could do hard things. I was in the career I had spent year working hard towards and I was not feeling fulfilled. My body was in pain, I didn’t have any energy to do anything after work like work out or do much other than go home, sit on the couch, and just get ready to go to sleep, wake up and do it all again. I had vented to my mom on the phone and one day she had just spoken to her hygienist and that hygienist had given my mom some advice to pass along and that advice changed everything for me! Disclaimer: that this did not happen all at once. But the pieces of advice I slowly implemented, and I truly feel it changed me into a different hygienist and person all around.
The first thing she said was, “Yes- what your daughter is going through what a lot of hygienists go through. That is normal but she needs to get involved!” The first way she recommended getting involved was going to continuing education courses and try to constantly take as many courses as she can. Continuing education courses not only help us keep our licensure and keep up us to date but kind of refresh us as hygienists and motivate us to be better. I come out of most CE courses ready and excited to implement what I have learned; it helps with the monotony of 1-hour patients back-to-back to back, right?! I also recommend that you take classes throughout your renewal period so that you are consistently feeling refreshed with new information or new motivations/tips and tricks to try. You can learn about so many new products to try as well.
The second thing she recommended was getting involved with my own body. She recommended taking time to do yoga for my body. Now, I have tried yoga and I am not great at it but stretching and breath work is so beneficial for not only our bodies but our minds. I have also implemented strength training into my work-out regiments and that has helped my back and neck tremendously. Strengthening my core has made a huge different in the pain I used to have in my back. A quick side story to combine these first two ways of getting involved. I was at an in person continuing education course and met a hygienist who had been a hygienist for 42 years. She was vibrant and so healthy and fit. I asked her what her secret was, and it was YOGA!
The third thing she said was “to get involved in changing my frame of mind”. I asked my mom what that meant, and my mom responded, “I don’t know what exactly she meant but that was the last thing she told me.” So, I have now had a few years to ponder that and here is what I have come up with. First, I had been in this mindset of oh my 2:00 o’clock patient didn’t show…. Do you see what I was doing there?? I wasn’t thinking of my patient as a patient I was thinking of the patient as a one-hour block of time to hurdle through before the next hour block of time etc., until I got to go home. Later I found out that the 2:00 o’clock patient had been in a car accident on her way to our office. I felt horrible that I had thought of the patient as a block of time and not as a human. (Let me be clear yes, I know we as hygienists all have a set amount of time to see our patients and that time is not unlimited so yes, we do see patients in blocks of time. But I am speaking to the way we think and treat patients.) So, I started really focusing on my patients, really getting to know them, asking them more questions about themselves as I was waiting for a sensor or doctors’ exam. I focused on trying to relate and really connect with each patient. Are there patients I clicked with much better than others? Yes of course! Are there some patients who I could tell would rather not talk much at all? YES! But 8/10 patients, I would say most patients wanted to converse and we would laugh, talk about tv shows or podcasts we were watching or listening too. I truly worked on relating to my patients and in time I would look at my schedule for the next day and I would see patients’ names and I was excited to see and visit with as I helped care for their oral hygiene. I would look at my schedule and I would say to my manager so many amazing fun patients are coming in tomorrow it’s going to be great. And those days and patients helped me change my mindset.
Since my mom’s hygienist left “change the frame of mind” open to interpretation I will also associate it to the pressure of being perfect. I don’t know about you as a hygienist, but when I left school, I felt this immense pressure to be the perfect hygienist, to say the right things and to always do everything perfect, perfect, perfect! I have learned to give myself grace. No one is perfect. We can try every day to do our best and of course treat our patients with the standard of care, but we are not perfect and that is okay. If you have worked in an office that has a morning huddle (which I think are great), when has the day ever gone as you planned in that morning huddle? NEVER!!!! There are so many things that are out of our control as a hygienist. Waiting for a doctor’s exam, a patient arriving late, technology issues, operatory issues, the list goes on and on, you know this! But what helped me in those times of looking at the clock and thinking oh my gosh I have seven minutes left in the appointment…. I still need the doctor to come in here and not chat my patients ear off…. I still need to place fluoride varnish AND flip my operatory over….. how am I going to do all of that?! Well, the thing is that I didn’t have control over some of that. My best advice is to remember that and to focus on the patient in your chair. If the patient in the chair feels like you are going to be rushing them out the door, or that you are frustrated with the doctor or whatever circumstance that is out of your control, the patient will not want to come back and be seen by you or maybe that office again. It is okay to apologize to the patient and let them know the doctor is coming, and that they know we are ready for the exam. While you wait for the doctor spend time educating, scheduling their next appointment, getting to know them, and connecting with them. Then when you bring the next patient back make sure to say thank you so much for waiting, it’s great to see you again or it’s so nice to meet you, let’s get you back! If you make each of your patient’s time with you feel valued and appreciated, you can have patients who are happy to come back and see you.
I would also like to recommend two things that also helped me out of my rut- education and community. I had the opportunity to become a clinical instructor at a dental hygiene school about 3 years into my dental hygiene career I truly feel that I became a better hygienist by being able to explain and teach students. I felt that explaining how to do instrumentation techniques, or explaining why I do something helped me solidify the things I knew. Being at a college also helped me stay very up to date and continually learning other tips and tricks from other hygienists! You may be reading this thinking; well, Sarah, I don’t have that same opportunity to teach at a college. That is okay. Maybe something you can do instead, is to ask yourself the why you do the things you do during your appointment. Why is the OCS so important? That can open a door to you doing research on nodes, muscles joints etc. and can help you learn. Deep dive into the things that aren’t your favorite things to do or skills you don’t feel as confident in and try to immerse yourself to become an expert in those things!
Community! I do hope that you are a part of your association, within our dental hygiene association we have components that meet, and you literally be among other hygienists that are in your physical area, and you can network. You can make new friends and meet up with old friends and really get to talk to other hygienists, that may have similar feelings of being a rut too. Being able to bounce ideas and get advice from others who truly understand situations you may be in, is so helpful. I hope this has helped you if you are stuck in a rut. If you are in a rut, you are the only one who can get yourself out. You can do it and feel excited about your career again. You have got this!
xoxo, Sarah Bateman, RDH
Sarah has been a dental hygienist for eleven years and has been in the dental field for 17 years. She lives on a ranch with her husband and their little boy who is almost a year old. Sarah has worked private practice and was a clinical instructor and professor at the Utah College of Dental Hygiene for 8 years before she had her baby and moved to their dream ranch in Idaho. She still temps in private practice two times a month right now while enjoying baby cuddles.