How to Boost Your Dental Hygienist Career

As a dental hygienist you are in a unique position to assess and help patients modify their dietary habits. There is a clear connection between nutrition and the incidence of both dental caries and periodontal disease, so it makes perfect sense to work with patients to help them improve nutritional habits. And your ability to help patients make this important change in their lives is one more important item to add to your toolbox of skills. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to mention in your next interview that you’d effected nutritional change for several patients?

Developing a plan

You will of course need buy-in from the dentist and probably office manager in your office. The best way to gain their approval is to have a structured plan for your nutritional counseling. Here’s one form the plan could take:

Initial assessment: Suggest that questions about nutrition/dietary habits be included on new-patient registration forms. Questions should be open-ended to allow patients a wide range of possible answers. (Don’t ask, “Do you eat five servings of fruits and vegetables daily?” Instead ask, “How many servings of fruits and vegetables do you eat daily?”) Then, at semi-annual exams, ask patients to provide updated nutritional information.

Oral exam: Your oral exam should provide information to add to your patient’s responses to screening questions. For example, widespread caries or periodontal disease can be a sign of poor nutrition. The presence of either is a perfect catalyst for a discussion of dietary habits.

Target specific groups: Nutritional counseling can be particularly valuable to parents of young children, pregnant or nursing women, teenagers and patients with chronic medical conditions. In each case, dietary habits can have a huge impact on both dental and general health.

Tools you can use: Two easy-to-use tools can help you demonstrate good nutrition to your patients. The first is MyPlate from the United States Department of Agriculture. The simple illustration of a balanced meal helps patients modify dietary habits. And the Harvard School of Public Health has developed an alternative to MyPlate, Healthy Eating Plate, which it is billed as an even-healthier approach to nutrition.

Some guidance: The dental education organization CDEWorld offers an online course in nutritional education, The Scope of Nutritional Counseling in the Dental Practice. The price is just $18 and it yields two CEUs. And the best part? Completion shows that you’re committed to integrating nutritional counseling into your patient care.