Dental hygienist

By LIANE VOISEY

Name: Dahlia Phillips

Age: 27

Job title: Dental hygienist

Working hours: 8am to 7pm, Monday to Thursday; 8am to 4pm, Friday.

Employers: Albert Street Dental Care, private dental clinics and hospitals.

Pay: The wage for a dental hygienist in New Zealand ranges from $18 to $45 an hour.


Qualifications needed: A two-year diploma programme undertaken at University of Otago School of Dentistry in Dunedin.

Career prospects: Self-employment or working flexibly (full or part-time) on contract to a number of practices is common.

Q. Describe what you do

A. It's a pretty varied job and includes removing bacterial deposits and superficial stain from teeth, taking x-rays, applying fissure sealants to prevent decay in children's teeth, making mouthguards for sport, fluoride applications, and the ever-popular teeth-whitening procedures.

Every patient has a very different mouth and so each person's treatment is varied according to their personal requirements.

Our aim is to prevent oral disease, treat/refer existing disease, and assist people in maintaining an optimum level of health.

Q. Why did you choose this line of work?

A. It's such a satisfying job for someone who likes to pay a lot of attention to detail and see results, and most importantly I love meeting, working with and helping people.

Q. What sort of training did you get?

A. The diploma course itself was both practical and theoretical, and is very science-based.

After graduating from the dental hygiene course you're expected to keep up-to-date on new research, techniques and products with continuing education courses.

Q. How popular is the job of hygienist in New Zealand?

A. Hygienists have been working in the US since the 1920s but it's still a relatively new profession in New Zealand. A lot of practices in New Zealand still don't have their own hygienist. Luckily for me, our practice was of one of the first, if not the first, to have hygienists, and employed hygienists from overseas since the 70s.

So our patients have a really good standard of oral care and know how beneficial the six-monthly hygiene appointments are in maintaining good oral hygiene to help prevent gum disease and dental decay.

Q. What skills/qualities do you need to do what you do?

A. You are working very intimately with your clients and a lot of people are nervous about having any work done in their mouth, so it's really important that you have a kind and caring nature.

You need to be culturally aware and sensitive to other people's values and needs, have excellent communication skills in order to explain complex information, be encouraging, positive, a good listener. And, of course, have great technical skills.

Q. Any memorable clients?

A. Every day we have wonderfully interesting patients with great stories to tell, and so many funny things happen, but because of patient confidentiality I'll have to keep them to myself.

Q. How would you define success in your job?

A. For me, success is when my patient leaves saying that they look forward to their next hygiene appointment, that they love coming in for hygiene appointments and that their teeth are feeling great. If the patient is happy then I'm happy.

Q. Best part of the job?

A. Its incredibly rewarding when patients look forward to coming in for hygiene visits - especially when they've had dental fears in the past and they've overcome them.

And it's so satisfying when they're achieving the desired results and maintaining them - for both the patient and the hygienist.

Q. Most challenging part of the job?

A. If you just go to the hygienist and don't have good oral hygiene habits in between appointments then you won't achieve the results you could otherwise. So for me it's encouraging daily flossing, flossing and more flossing.