Syeda Ijaz, RDH, BDS
Syeda Ijaz, RDH, BDS, moved to the U.S. with her husband in 2004 from her native country of Pakistan. As a dentist back in her country, she had to pause pursuing her career in the U.S. because she wanted to focus on the proper upbringing of her children. Once her youngest started attending school, she wanted to reconnect to dentistry again. Dental hygiene appealed to her as it gave her a perfect balance between work and home. She is a graduate of the Collin College Dental Hygiene program. For Syeda, providing dental hygiene is a service that improves people's lives. Coming from another country, she understands immigrants' hurdles and hesitations in seeking dental help. Her passion is to help underserved communities understand the dental system and educate them about oral hygiene.
Refugee Children: How Dental Hygienists Help Welcome Them to New Country
When families are severed from the land of their origin and placed in another country, living conditions are anything but ideal. Refugees face many problems when settling in new surroundings. Money is tight, there is a cultural shock, and there is often discrimination and xenophobia based on race or religion.1
Under all these conditions, thinking about oral health, especially for...
Lesser Known Conditions Associated with the TMJ
The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) examination is part of routine screening not only for dentists but also for dental hygienists. During our extraoral exam, we palpate the joint, try to detect the movements of condyles during opening and closing, see if it's deviating to one side or the other, and try to feel for any crepitus, popping, or clicking.
We ask...
5 Dental Hygiene School Tips for Staying Poised from the Beginning
After a long, anticipating wait, you have been selected to enter hygiene school. You did all the prerequisites, got good grades, and now you are here! In two or three years, depending on your program, you will enter the respectable and rewarding dental profession.
Two years do not sound like much, but trust me, the days are packed in a...
Dental Hygienists’ Prayers: Six Wishes Muttered during the Hectic Workday
Steady is a good word for describing the dental hygiene profession. If you are working in a clinic, most days may feel the same. A list of patients awaits you, requiring gingival or periodontal debridement either in the form of prophy, periodontal maintenance, scaling in the presence of inflammation, or non-surgical periodontal therapy/SRP. The instruments used each day are...
Back to the Basics: Hygiene Students Teach Oral Health to Refugees
One of the major things that the class of 2021 missed during the senior year of dental hygiene school was community rotations. COVID made it impossible to go to many places that we might have gone otherwise, such as senior homes, Head Start schools, etc. When the time came to do community dental outreach projects, educating about oral hygiene...
7 Things Dental Hygienists Are Thankful For
Being a dental hygienist is hard; demanding a lot from you physically, emotionally, and mentally. You sit for six to eight hours digging into gingival pockets and interdental areas, scaling all the calculus with remnants of last night’s dinner. It requires steady hands, sharp eyesight, and a not-so-faint heart. Mucous, saliva, and blood are our daily companions.
Then there are...
Khat Leaves: Regional Chewing Habit Could Lead to Oral Lesions
Decades ago, I watched a documentary on Yemen that showed how in Yemeni culture, people habitually chewed some sort of leaves, especially during social gatherings. Since I did not know many cultures had the habit of chewing leaves, this memory stayed with me.
Fast forward to dental hygiene school, and during my third semester, I treated a patient who was...
Hygiene School During COVID: How My Class Braved Through It
The sun is barely out this morning, and my six clinic buddies and I wait in our cars in the campus parking lot. When the clock hits seven, our dental hygiene instructors emerge from the building holding baskets that contain thermometers, masks, and sanitizers.
We wear our masks and lower the windows. They greet us and take our temperatures, ask...