Carrie McHill, EPDH
Carrie McHill, EPDH, is a hygienist who lives and works in the beautiful Willamette Valley in Oregon. She graduated from Oregon Tech in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in dental hygiene, expanded practice, and restorative functions. Her main goal as a hygienist is to promote full-body health by bridging the gap between the dental office and other health professionals, encouraging an overall wellness approach to dental care. Education, research of new and exciting dental avenues, and oral health relating to overall systemic health are huge passions of hers that she strives to share with everyone. When she’s not practicing hygiene, she loves to explore the gorgeous scenery Oregon has to offer, travel around the world, and play music with her husband.
Today’s Lesson for Dental Hygienists: You Are Doing Enough!
Dental hygienists continue to pursue the latest advances in technology and education, but it can become overwhelming. The influx of new systems and studies inundates dental conferences, emails, podcasts, and social media, leaving us to feel inadequate or like we are not doing enough.
Dental hygienists are a special breed, and we like to be perfect, detail-oriented, and well-educated. This...
Special Needs Patients: Preparing a Dental Hygiene Appointment
Every hygienist wants to provide the best care for patients, but sometimes, we don't know exactly how to do that when it comes to a patient with special needs. Hygienists tend to immediately feel at least some anxiety about the appointment with a special needs patient due to the unknown.
How will the patient react in certain circumstances? How should...
Systemic Health: 5 Things Dental Hygienists Should Be Talking About
For most patients, home-care tips go a long way in preventing diseases in the mouth. The physical, mechanical removal of plaque and bacteria is important to promote for oral health, and it also lays the foundation for promoting overall health.
Brushing, cleaning interdentally, and rinsing are the backbone of hygiene education. If our patients implemented these three things into their...
Cultural Competency: A Dental Hygiene Chair that Welcomes All
Culture influences our behaviors in every aspect of our lives, contributing to dental hygienists’ decisions about habits, desires, and needs. Culture also heavily influences decision-making in health care ‒ a major reason why cultural competency classes are required to renew dental hygiene licenses in many states.
In order to serve a vast demographic of patients and be able to cater...
Education: Programs that Allow Hygienists to Move Beyond Clinical Dental Hygiene
How do dental hygienists embrace their role as a specialist beyond the dental chair? Many clinical dental hygiene providers eventually want to step into other positions in administration, health policy, global health, academia, research, or educational roles.
However, the information to pursue those pathways can be unclear or hard to find. The following information can be used as a starting...
8 Reasons to Stop Being a Clinical Dental Hygienist
Gasp.
You mean some people become hygienists, and they don’t like it?
There. I said it. Because no one seems to want to talk about it.
Sometimes we just need some time away from the polish, scale, floss, educate, schedule, wipe, repeat. A break. A vacation.
And, sometimes it’s something more. And, that’s scary!
Believe it or not, some people go to school to...