If you ask around the dental community, it seems like everyone is looking for a dental hygienist. Yet if you ask dental hygienists, you’ll find many of them aren’t looking for regular employment and are turning to temping. What is the lure?
Flexibility
I have often called hygiene the flexible-inflexible job. The flexibility in setting your workdays is great. There were times in my career when I worked one day a week and others full time. But once you commit to a schedule, you are stuck. You can’t take a long lunch for a doctor’s appointment or take off the afternoon to attend your child’s honor roll ceremony unless you have six months’s notice. Often, requests for time off are met with a guilt trip over the patients who won’t receive care, demands to find a temp, or simply a refusal.
One allure of temping is the opportunity to take care of yourself or your family. Tonya Lanthier, RDH, founded DentalPost, an online job board, because she needed the flexibility to go to fertility appointments, which her regular office couldn’t accommodate. Once she had her twins, temping offered her an adaptable schedule when her girls were sick, the sitter canceled, or life just got the best of her. With many hygienists turning to “side gigs” for extra income or career fulfillment, temping offers the flexibility they need to get a new business off the ground.
Standard of care
Recently, a friend of mine left her full-time job and turned to temping because she, the dentist, and the office manager could not agree on patient care. She felt like the office was letting insurance dictate treatment, shortening hygiene appointments to get more people in, refusing to replace old, worn-out instruments, and asking her to compromise the care she provided. Another friend was asked to change her probing depths so that four quads of NSPT could be treatment-planned!
I hear stories like this from a lot of hygienists. Dentistry is in a tough spot with rising costs and decreasing insurance reimbursements, while, at the same time, there’s also an awareness that oral health is truly whole-body health. Hygienists who take their role as prevention specialists seriously are frustrated by this disconnect. When temping, an RDH can pick and choose what office they will or won’t work in and, sometimes, even dictate the appointment lengths.
Avoid drama
Interoffice conflict is nothing new. You often spend more time with your coworkers than you do with your family. But with the hiring crisis, some offices might be slower to let “bad apples” go for fear that someone is better than no one. So, poor behavior is being tolerated, which drives out other team members.
One way to avoid drama is not to be part of a team that participates in it. When temping, there isn’t time to get caught up in who said what or who isn’t doing enough. You come in, see your patients, and leave—there is no drama.
Feeling of appreciation
Day in, day out in the same office we often go blind to the efforts of our coworkers. Their above-and-beyond behaviors become what’s expected. The only time we start to notice is when they don’t do something right. But when you walk into a temp job, you are the hero! You have saved the day. The patients don’t need to be canceled, and the production is not lost. Feeling appreciated feels good!
Respect
Another friend spoke of having no voice in their office. Policies and procedures that were to be integrated into the hygiene department were set without the input of all the hygienists who would carry them out. Even though they took continuing education courses on new products, technologies, and techniques, the office wanted to do things as they had always been done. There was no way to grow in their career, even though all the science was screaming for ways to do it. They were left to feel like a teeth-cleaner, not a well-educated health-care professional.
When they switched to temping, patients were thrilled with the information they were introduced to at their hygiene appointment. They often remarked, “Can I see you again next time?” to which the hygienist would either have to dodge around an answer or let patients know they were a temp.
Don’t turn in your two weeks’s notice quite yet
Before you decide temping is the way to go, there are some downsides to the vagabond lifestyle. Jen Stanley, RDH, and full-time temp, says in the beginning, it was sometimes tough to get paid, especially as an employee and not an independent contractor. Also, you always feel like you’re cooking in someone else's kitchen, not knowing where things are or how to use the technology. Ergonomically, this can wreak havoc on your body. Popping in for a day or two, there isn’t much time to set up a room to prevent repetitive twisting and turning.
The biggest one for me is a lack of connection with patients. That’s my favorite part of hygiene. It’s fun to watch families grow and hear about their adventures, but it’s even better to see their health improve and know you played a part in that! It helps you grow as a clinician, seeing what works for patients and what doesn’t.
In a perfect world, every hygienist would be able to find the perfect work-life balance, practice to the top of their license, and have a team that works together to uplift and support each other. I know many hygienists who have this. But if you’re feeling stuck, the perfect office just might be one temp shift away!
