Sep 4, 2019
When your job requires you to get right up close and personal to a patient’s mouth, you need to really get on top of your cleanliness game—especially before you graduate and start your career as a hygienist. So, to that end, we’ve brought on three veterans of the dental industry who specialize in keeping the hygienist’s workspace as healthy as possible for patient and professional alike.
Emily Boge, RDH, is the dental administrative chair at Hawkeye Community College and a product innovator with American Eagle Instruments. Joy Void-Holmes is also a dental hygienist and serves part-time on the faculty of Fortis College. Michelle Lee is the executive director of the Organization for Safety, Asepsis and Prevention (OSAP), a body that advocates for safe and clean oral healthcare.
In this episode, our guests discuss which bad sanitary habits you need to ditch before entering the workforce, explain how you can become certified in infection control, and examine what holds dental offices back from maintaining good sanitation.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Interview starts: 3:02
- What our guests feel is the most important lessons dental hygiene students learn from the get-go.
- Their advice for which bad habits students absolutely need to get rid of and why they need to get on top of their mask game.
- Why Michelle believes social media is playing an important role in educating everybody about infection control.
- What steps you can take to get yourself certified in infection prevention.
- The reason students and newly employed hygienists might be reluctant to speak up about infection control issues, even if they have the proper knowledge.
- The importance of fostering a more honest environment in a dental office where people with sanitation concerns can speak up without fear of reprisal.
- Why you’ll need to sacrifice some of your personal style if you wish to keep your office free from infection.
- What questions you should ask about infection control, and what you should be on the lookout for, when job hunting.
QUOTES:
“If you’re working in a high-aerosol environment with a Level One mask, you’re not getting the adequate protection you need.”
“This is how we practice safe dentistry in our office, and you need to go through this training.”
“Unfortunately sometimes we have to require things for them to get done.”
“They think they’re saving money, but what they’re really gonna end up being is sick.”
“These folks that are very, very infection control-conscious, they get kind of a bad rap in the office and that makes me sad.”
“We’re protecting ourselves and the patient, and no job is worth your safety and security.”
“If you want your students to
behave a certain way then you have to emulate that
behavior.”
LINKS:
Emily’s email: emily@thinkbigdental.com
Joy on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/drjoyrdh/
Joy on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drjoyrdh/
Joy on Twitter - https://twitter.com/DrJoyRDH
Joy’s email: info@drjoyrdh.com
OSAP homepage - https://www.osap.org/
Michelle’s email: mlee@osap.org
Thank you to Paradise Dental Technologies aka PDT for providing sponsorship for this episode!
Be sure to thank the sponsor for this episode by heading over to www.PDTDental.com and picking up a new instrument or telling them thank you in person at one of the conferences!
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