What I wouldn’t give for someone’s visit to be, just once, only about “cleaning teeth.” The job of mouth janitor would be easy—tidy up someone’s mouth and send them on their way. Honestly, that’s what I thought being a dental hygienist might look like. But it isn’t.
Being a dental hygienist means spending so much time caring for others that we forget to care for ourselves. It’s listening to extensive medical histories, piecing together possible root causes of disease, and recognizing how overall health connects to oral health.
Being a dental hygienist means providing counseling on tobacco cessation and nutritional choices, among other things, and sometimes being a stand-in therapist because a patient just needs someone to hear them.
The unexpected side of hygiene
These are the differences between a dental hygienist and a “mouth janitor.” I never expected to carry the weight of the worries I now have. I worry about Abdul’s dangerously high blood pressure that he shrugs off. I worry about Kasey’s mental health because she can’t find the energy to care for herself. I worry about Janice, who’s exhausted caring for her husband with dementia. The list goes on.
But it is my privilege to worry about and care for these people.
What does any of this have to do with cleaning teeth? To the casual observer, not much. But as a future registered dental hygienist, I know it has everything to do with treating the whole person, not just the mouth.
My final semester in dental hygiene school has made it abundantly clear to me that the mouth is the mirror of a person’s physical and mental health. Our role is to help patients recognize this connection, and to care for them in ways that go far beyond scaling and polishing.
