THE INDUSTRY
Wisconsin Needs Their Teeth Cleaned
Originally Published October 7th, in The Eval
Hygienists are leaving the profession and it's hard to blame them...
Let’s take it back. It’s early March 2020, and the news of COVID-19 is sweeping across the world.
Dental offices are closing left and right and those non-elective procedures (ahem, prophys) are the last thing that patients are worrying about.
Exit Stage Left
Fast forward. Offices are opening (slowly), but the ever so important hygiene department at your dental practice is decimated. Your hygienists don't want their job back.
Head, body. Head, Body
Many professions ate their punches.
But the dental hygiene profession was KO'd. Here’s why:
Reason 1: It's a Dangerous Job.
Move Over, Deadliest Catch…
Not really a joking matter. Dental hygienists can undoubtedly say that their job is the most dangerous during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aerosols galore. Close working proximity to mouths. Constant contact with patients....
...It's not a surprise that dental hygienists came out on top in World Economic Forum's ranking of jobs with the highest COVID risk.
Anotha' Problem
Comorbidities also don't help.
In a survey of 4,776 dental hygienists in the fall of 2020, one-third of the surveyed stated that they had a medical condition which increased their risk of COVID-19.
Reason 2: Females Dominate the Profession
As the world closed for the COVID-19 pandemic, woman were more likely to have the burden of taking care of children and aging parents.
The combination of greater at home responsibilities and the female heavy profession was a recipe for disaster.
Well, that's concerning...
All of this data leads us to the point of a serious problem.
The Numbers
- 7.9% of dental hygienists left the profession
- 18,000 dental hygienists are short from the workforce
- Most of the these hygienists left their job voluntarily
Turn to the Internet
Anecdotally, you can find threads upon threads on message boards of dentists struggling to hire dental hygienists. And when they do find an acceptable hire, the salary requests are often astronomical.
Here come the Replacements? Hopefully
Wisconsin is sending a plea for help.
Dr. Paula Crum, the president of the Wisconsin Dental Association recently pleaded for the Wisconsin Technical College system to send in back-up when it comes to training hygienists.
But this isn’t just a problem for those brat eating, beer-guzzling cheese heads.
Looking at the dental hygiene education programs throughout the country, you quickly see several states that suffer from a severe disproportion of dental hygiene programs to actively practicing dentists.
Yes, some of these make sense.
States with huge dentist populations like New York and California will always have skewed dental hygiene graduates to practicing dentists.
But other states truly suffer. Like Alabama which has only 3 dental hygiene programs for over 2,000 active practicing dentists.
Side note: It's really difficult to get a firm grasp of dental hygiene class size. Most schools seem to range from 15 to 40 students per class
So what's next?
Let's try to balance things out, but it doesn't look great.
The Texas Department of State Health Services forecasted that their dental hygienist shortage is projected to increase by 28.4% by 2030.
28.4%...that's a serious problem.
In response, community colleges are trying to help.
Concorde Career Colleges has added an accelerated dental hygienist program to enroll 32 future dental hygienists every eight months.
...But be ready to empty your pockets for new hires...
A poll published by the ADA earlier this summer revealed that 70.7% of dental practices said that dental hygiene pay rate increased
We can only expect that number will grow.
$60 dollars per hour as the standard dental hygiene pay may not be too outlandish in the near future.
Originally Published in The Eval