eddyRDH said:
I am an RDH going to DDS, and we are not grossly overpaid! Think about what you are saying...... Where I work I am paid salary $240 per day ( $30 per hour in VA) , prophys are $58, exam $42, fluoride $26, 4 bitewings $42, pano $79, perio: $175 per quad. My pt load averages 11-12 pt per day. If I am doing perio, it goes to 8-9 patients. But overall, we are "producers" ! We help make dental practices very successful. Yes, you are a DDS, but you can't run the practice by yourself. Every one, dental assistant , front desk and RDH's play a very critical role.
Your assistant- will probably spend more time with the pt than you
Your Front desk- they are the first that is seen by patients
Your RDH- pt will been seeing them 2 x year or more if perio pt
All true enough.
And by the way.... not all RDH's are 2 yr grads. I have a 4 year degree, B.S. in Dental Hygiene. Also, for two year programs (they are a rip off) it is actually 3 yrs of schooling. The first year is just prereq's (Micro, anatomy,chemistry and so on). Then they have to apply to DH school which is 2 yrs!!!
DH programs awarding bachelor's degrees are significantly in the minority. Further, I never said
anything about "2-year grads"; I referred to associate's degree programs which, like it or not, is what the significant majority of DH curricula are.
In my class, 200 people applied, 40 were accepted and 22 graduated. What happened to the rest? 1 dropped out at will, the others were failed or were held back 1 yr. As you can see, our schooling is not a walk in the park!
I'm not going to open up a debate over who's smarter than whom (
MOD NOTE: if anyone else does, this thread will be closed in a heartbeat), but here and throughout your post, you make the significant--and seriously flawed--assumption that all DDS & DH students are equally intelligent, and that academic struggle is purely a function of curriculum, rather than reflecting both rigor of curriculum and academic ability of students. I had to successfully finish 112 credit hours of graduate-level coursework to complete first & second years. I don't know specifics on IUSD's hygiene program, but associate's degree programs are typically ~60 hours of undergraduate classes. Like it or not, that's a 2:1 imbalance, and that's even before the undergrad/post-grad discrepancy widens the gap even further.
Now, before you jump on me for belittling your profession, I'm not saying anywhere in this post that hygiene is unimportant or its training is insignificant. What I
am saying, and there's plenty of objective data supporting the position, is that the two professions are not identical, they are not interchangeable, and they are not equally trained to diagnose & treat. Dentistry is the top-level provider of oral health care, & hygiene is a valuable, but
adjunct, support profession.
Put another way, if every hygienist on earth disappeared this afternoon, every patient in a given practice could still be treated by the employing dentists; if every dentist disappeared, however, everyone except SRP & maintenance patients would be completely SOL.
Don't forget........... we have grueling national boards, clinical boards and state exams to pass!!!!!
This is another appearance of the flawed premise I mentioned above. In case nobody has mentioned this, we have to do all that too.
I have worked for many doctors. I have seen practices gross over 1 million per year. They are the ones who realize that there staff is very "key" to success.
Dental Hygiene is not an easy job. In under 45 min we have to:
Review med hx
Take BP/pulse
Perio probe 32 teeth with 6 readings per tooth
scaling( coronal and sub)
do oral health care instructions- explaining what is periodontal disease, how they can prevent it, demo places they are missing with brush,floss, waterpik etc.
polish
fluoride
Like I said, you'll get no arguments from me on any of this.
Plaque scrapers? I think not. Try a pt with generalized moderate periodontitis and gen heavy sub and supra calc. with heavy stain.
You & other hygienists across the nation aren't just "plaque scrapers," not by a wide margin.
But, by equally wide a margin, you're not doctors either (yet, in your case
![Wink ;) ;)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
). I find it both highly disingenuous & deplorably unethical that hygiene as a profession is trying to legislate itself into something it objectively is not, and is not even close to being. It's doing a tremendous disservice to patients, and it's for nothing more significant than professional chest-beating.