by Mark Hartley
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RDH participates in two awards each year. In the final month of winter, we're closing the books on one award and getting underway on the other one.
RDH collaborates with Philips Sonicare on the Mentor of the Year award. The award winner is featured in our April issue and is formally toasted during a ceremony at the American Dental Hygienists' Association's annual session.
The April issue will be the second time Pam Myers has appeared on the RDH cover. She appeared on the June 1989 cover when we published an article about dental hygiene in prisons.
I had a few thoughts while reliving this memory from the past. How about that headline, eh? “My Patients Are Inmates.” Even though I had been on the staff of RDH for four years at that point, I can't take credit for it. I'd remember thinking of something like that.
Laura Albrecht was the editor then, and Laura was arguably the most passionate RDH editor about dental hygiene the magazine ever had. She started the trend of profiling dental hygienists in untypical career paths. She wrote in her editor's note that month that she spent two days with Myers at the Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville. “The professional atmosphere in the dental clinic makes it almost too easy to erase from your mind the fact that you are inside a prison.”
I have no doubt that professionalism persists today. For example, Anita Jones, RDH, wrote in her nomination of Myers for the Mentor of the Year award: “Over the years, it has been amazing to watch Ms. Myers work as a dental hygiene clinician and dental hygiene coordinator utilizing her skills, education, and leadership abilities to develop a prison dental hygiene program that is of high caliber today.”
The other cover on this page is one you likely will remember. The September 2009 cover featured the nine recipients of the Sunstar/RDH Award of Distinction. The recipients are recognized for their achievements during the RDH Under One Roof conference each year and, of course, in the magazine's September issues.
The conference was hosted in Las Vegas last year, and that is the famous four–mile strip of casinos along Las Vegas Boulevard in the background of the photo. The conference will be hosted in Orlando, Fla., next year. Sunstar does such a terrific job of treating the recipients like royalty each year.
March 31 is the fast approaching deadline for entering the 2010 Award of Distinction. The easiest way to enter is to visit www.rdhmag.com, scroll down on the home page, and click on the related link.
I hope to see you in Orlando as one of the recipients.
