Dental offices are made up of a lot of different team members. We dove into some of the roles in a couple previous episodes, but today we are talking all things dental hygienist. What do dental hygienists do and how do they operate within a dental practice? Let’s dive in.

SIDE NOTED: We are not only rounding off this segment of “who’s who in the dental office”, but we are also rounding off season 1! We have enjoyed having you all on this journey and can’t wait to see you in season 2! We will still be active on all our socials so drop us a line. Don’t be a stranger!

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As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

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Transcript:

Well, well, welcome back to another episode. I’m Dr. Mike. – And I’m Dr. Rusty. – And we’re two general dentists practicing in Portland, Oregon. – Welcome back to our podcast, DM a dentist. – In today’s episode, we’re talking about our final team member in the who’s who in the dental office. This is part three, and we’re talking about the dental hygienist. – The hygienist? You mean the cornerstone of the dental office? – You mean the boss? – Yeah, basically the boss. – They’re kind of in charge, it seems like. – The boss, sometimes, you know. – My boss, day to day. – We love our hygienists, but you know. – Yeah, but they run the place. – They do. – Yeah, in a lot of ways, they do keep the office running. And keep a lot of things. – Absolutely. – Systems running, recall patients coming through. I mean, hygienist is important. – I mean, does your hygienist or does your hygienist? Does your patients say, “Hey, I wanna see you” or they wanna see the hygienist? – Oh, for sure. They request a hygienist. They build a relationship with them. You know, the hygienist is like the bread and butter of the practice. It’s bringing people through to get exams. And I mean, they’re coming back to see the hygienist though. They build a relationship with them. They’re not coming to see me. – No, they wanna see Vonda, or Sam, or Angela. Any of you all that are amazing. – Yeah. – But when they’re in their chair, they’re happy. They’re getting their teeth clean, things are good. When they’re in my chair, it’s ’cause they need something more. So typically, patients are just happier, I think, when they’re coming for a hygiene visit. ‘Cause they’re– – Yeah, it’s like a real spa day. – Yeah, it’s basically– – Yeah, it’s a treatment. Yeah. – Something crazy. – But what is a role of a hygienist? I mean, you know, we talked a little bit about some of the roles. What are they called? – Dental nurses. – Dental nurse. – Yeah, so are dental nurses? – As you all know, they’re not dental nurses. – Yeah, if you listened to our early episodes, no one in the dental office is called a nurse. So y’all better know that if not go back in with then I think it was the assistant– – Listen to a different one. – Yeah. – These are what we’re talking today about dental hygienist, not dental nurses. So yeah, what are they? – The hygienists, they’re really involved. So they’re providers of the office too, right? They’re licensed in a similar way to the dentist or license. By the state, they have to go...

There are many team members that make up a dental office. This is Part 2 of our three part series on “Who’s Who in the Dental Office”. This week we talk to two dental assistants as they share what its like being a dental assistant. They answer some of your most pressing questions and share some fun stories. Tune in as Roxy and Diego join us on the show and share some insight into the world of dental assisting.

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As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

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Audio Transcript:

Welcome to DM Adentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast where Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear. Well, welcome back! Today we have two special guests for our next interview series, Who’s Who in the Dental Office Part 2. Today we have two of our dental assistants. We have Roxy and Diego, two of my favorites. Roxy, how long have you been a dental assistant? I’ve been a dental assistant for about 10 years now. Okay, awesome. And Diego, what about you? Been a dental assistant for about 7 years now. Okay, nice, love it, love it, okay. And you know, I know a lot of people, you know, we talked about it previously in our basic introduction to The Who’s Who about like the dental assistant roles and things, but a lot of people aren’t familiar with what a dental assistant, some people haven’t called a dental nurse to do, right? How would you describe what you all do on a day to day? You know, I feel like we’re honestly the doctors right hand. We do a lot that I feel like the patients don’t necessarily see. We welcome the patients, we triage the patients. We do a little bit of everything, honestly. So triage, what is that like if a new patient is coming in or like they have a problem, like what do you mean by triage? So we will sit the patient down and kind of figure out what’s going on with the patient and let the doctor know we, there’s a lot of communication with what we do. So just kind of communicating with what the patient tells us and then letting the doctor know what is going on. So the patient doesn’t feel like they are repeating themselves. True. Yeah, that’s important because a lot of times I feel like that’ll happen where you know, they come in and they’re like, hey, this tooth is hurting me. It happened X amount of days ago. And then I come in and I’m like, hey, what’s going on? And then like this tooth broke. It happened X amount of days ago. I just told them that I feel like patients really are eyes along when they have to repeat themselves. So if I can limit that, that’s great. But yeah, we do, we do a lot that people don’t necessarily see. For sure, a lot of behind the scene stuff too, right? Like all the like sterilization, like slipping room, setting up rooms, helping chair side, like tons of rolls that you all have in the office for sure. So, and another big role I think that the dental assistant has is to like help chair side with patients, right? A lot of patients that are coming are really anxious or nervous to be there, right? Like being in the dental chair isn’t the most fun experience. We get it. So like what are some things that you c...

The Olympic Games have dominated TV screens for the past few weeks and sadly have come to an end. The US pulled off the win with medal count, but tied China for number of gold medals. Gold is so coveted, but did you know dentists have been using gold to restore teeth longer than the Olympic Games have been using gold to signify victory? Yep. You heard that right. In this episode Dr. Mike and Dr. Rusty chat about gold in dentistry and other common materials used to restore teeth!

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As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

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Transcript:

Welcome to DM A Dentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast where Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear. Welcome back! We are back! It’s been a little while since we put out an episode, but we’re really excited to be back. I know Rusty, it’s been like a busy summer, man. Yeah, we’ve been out hiking and camping, backpacking, I think you’ve been to a couple weddings. Concerts. Yeah, all the summer things. Yeah, now mention our exciting news coming up too. We have a new podcast studio. So we’ve been in the process of moving studios, sorry, we’ve been a little behind on the content, but yeah, we’re excited. We’re almost moved into our new place. No promises. I don’t know when we’ll be done getting it ready. Yeah, new place. Yeah, so we’re still in our original studio as you can see, but I’m super excited to show you the new space as we get moving into the air and as we get set up in the new space, so can’t wait to show you all what happens. Yeah, super excited about that. It’ll be awesome, but I’m also super excited about the Olympics. It’s been great. We just finished up this past week. Yeah, and USA with the overall win. Yeah. I saw you know we… Hey. You said… You said… Yeah, we had a tight China with 40 gold medals, but we got the overall medal count because we got more silver and bronze than they did. Yeah, I think USA ended up with a total of 126 medals. Yep. China had 91, so we got them there. So beat them by a size of a amount. Overall medal count is nice, but we know it’s gold that matters, and we tied them there 40-40, but got the overall count. True. Yeah, and funny, funny you say that. The gold was first given out at the Olympics in 1904 in St. Louis, so that was like the first gold medal, which is… Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it’s been around a long time, yeah, the common thing. Yeah. And the Olympics have obviously been around a lot longer than that, but gold, yeah, just surpassed 100 and so years, 100 and a little over that. But gold has also been used in dentistry actually for a lot longer than it’s been used in the Olympics. Gold was used, you know, at least 2,500 years ago, maybe a little bit further back than that too. Wow. Yeah, cool, very cool. Yeah, so it’s very old, isn’t it? It is. It’s been around thousands of years, and I would say the most common use was like to replace missing teeth and to help, you know, like reattach or form of a false tooth with gold, or, you know, various other things gold was used for, like, you know, thousands years ago. Gold used in jewelry, even back in the days, using like cosmetic things for a while, kind of like tooth gems tod...