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What To Do Now? Dental Hygienist Career Training

by Karen Jo Shapiro
Online Education Columnist

Do you like helping people in a hands-on way? Are you looking for a way to retrain and enter the health field? Dental hygiene is an important part of overall health, and hygienists are the ones that make sure your mouth is in its best shape. Online dental hygienist training courses are a great way to improve your skills and retrain for this hands-on career.

About Career Skills for Dental Hygienists

You might be a good match for a career as a dental hygienist if you are good with your hands, enjoy helping people, and have an interest in oral care--making retraining a simple matter of improving your career skills. As a hygienist you would be responsible for working with patients to clean their teeth, assess the health of their gums, take x-rays, and more. Being a dental hygienist takes a certain amount of stamina (you'd be on your feet for most of the day) and manual dexterity. Hygienists are also the front-line people for identifying potential problems and pointing them out to dentists. Good hygienists are also educators who have the career skills to give advice about the best way to brush teeth and floss.

Hygienists work with dentists in settings like outpatient clinics and small practices. In this way, they are almost always part of a team, yet they also need to operate independently because they might have a full day's worth of patients. This career is one that is essential no matter the economy--people will always have teeth that need to be cleaned and assessed. The need for hygienists is expected to continue to be high well into the future.

Career Advice about the Dental Hygiene Field

Do you think this career might be one you would enjoy? Retraining into the career of dental hygiene will require you obtain an associate's degree or certificate, and additional college education, like a bachelor's degree, can also be helpful. You can improve your skills by taking classes such as chemistry, anatomy, dental hygiene, and dental materials. Online dental hygiene training courses offer a way to carry out your studies.

More about Dental Hygienist Career Training & Dental Hygienist Schools Online


Ashworth College

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    Karen Jo Shapiro is a psychologist who specializes in leadership and career development in addition to personal coaching. She is the owner of Your Next Steps Coaching and is on adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC. She leads workshops for women on achieving their dreams through action planning, and also on powerful connections through networking. Karen Jo has undergraduate degrees in English and Spanish from Colby College and a Psy.D. from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. She has published two books of humorous poetry for children.