 Hello everybody, Andrew Majeski here with dental ill tutoring. So in the video today I am going to talk about the Restorative Hygiene Program. So depending on where you live, you might not have this opportunity for you. Now I took the Restorative Hygiene Program in Ottawa. So Ottawa, Ontario, Canada about four or five years ago now. So it's not offered everywhere and when I was looking into it it was simply because my boss, who I was working with and for at the time, he needed some some extra help. A restorative hygienist isn't a dentist, of course, but they can have advanced skills that a dental hygienist or a dental nurse can't have. So for example, as a restorative hygienist, I can place composites. I can place amalgams. I can place almost any temporary filling. I can polish them. I can place temporary crowns. I can even place permanent crowns too, but I can't make the crowns. So does that make sense? So think of placing like temporary bridges, permanent bridges. I can even make temporary crowns and temporary bridges, but I can't make permanent ones. So in a nutshell, a restorative hygienist can pretty much place things inside the mouth, but we can't alter tooth structure and we can't touch enamel, meaning I can't pick up a high speed and polish down enamel or, you know, prep the tooth in any way, shape or form, but I can pick up a high speed to polish that composite filling that I had just placed or the amalgam that I had just placed. But so you might be wondering, well, how does a dentist and a restorative hygienist work together? And this is why it's not that popular, at least where I live, is because people don't really know how to utilize a restorative hygienist, but once they do, we can do so much. So as an example, a typical day in a dental office would be the dentist would see the first patient. The dentist would give a local anesthetic and then prep the tooth. So let's say we're doing a filling or two fillings or whatever. So the dentist would give the freezing and then prep the tooth. Let's say that takes about a half an hour, maybe even less, and then me as the restorative hygienist would come in and do the rest of the work. So I would do the rest of the appointment, meaning I would place any liners that need to be placed. I would place that composite. I would polish the composite. I would check the bite to make sure it's perfect. And then I would let the patient leave. That's it. So the dentist does the beginning portion. I would do the end. So being a restorative hygienist is awesome because we can do so much more. And for those of you who don't know, I started my mobile hygiene practice last year. So this is perfect for me to really utilize my skills also where I can actually place a temporary. So let's say which happens a lot. I see a lot of children where they have little cavities like teeny, teeny tiny. We could technically leave them alone. It's hard to say, but I can actually place what you've probably heard about. I thought I had the bottle here. Let me check. Silver diamine fluoride. No, it's probably downstairs actually. Sorry guys, I thought I might have it here. But I can place a drop of that. And that can actually help to kill that cavity that's in there. And then I can place a temporary Fuji glass ionomer over top. So it's kind of like a composite but not. And this way I'm fixing that little cavity. I'm telling the parents we don't need to give them a needle. We don't need to give them a drill. I would obviously polish off that temporary too as much as possible when needed. And then that's it. So I've been doing that a lot in my practice now where if they have a little, little cavity where I know, you know, it's just so tiny where I see a lot of parents that won't go to a dentist. Unfortunately, they won't even take their children to a dentist because they're either too young, they're too anxious, they won't sit still. So instead of doing nothing, at least I can place that and then place a temporary Fuji glass ionomer over top. And that's it. But I do always tell the parents they should be going to a dentist or a dental office to get those x-rays done every six months to make sure that that cavity is not there anymore. If it gets larger because they're not doing everything that they can with the home care, then they will have to go to a dentist to get an actual composite, to take out the cavity with the high speed, with a needle probably, but it can't hurt to try that first. So I would say as a restorative hygienist, that's what I'm utilizing my skills the most now in my own practice. In the dental office now, it's quite common where I see patients who come in because they have a chipped tooth or they say, I just had my filling done, but it feels kind of high. So instead of them being booked back with the dentist, they are booked back with me where I just have to polish that for them. And that's it. So it saves the dentist time because they don't have to come in to do that. In private practice now, I do a lot of a patient coming in and saying, my temporary crown came off or my permanent crown came off. Can you resubmit this back in for me? The dentist always does have a look to make sure everything's okay. If it is, like it didn't just pop off because of the huge cavity there, but if everything looks okay, then they give me the go ahead to resubmit that back in. So that is quite common. Even if the dentist is just simply running behind, they have so many patients that they have to see. If we work together, you know, they do the needle, they do the prep work, I come in, do everything else. They can start another patient while I'm doing patient A. And then patient B, they can get started with that one doing the needle, the prep work, and then they're done. I should be done patient A and then I can move over to patient B to finish up that one and they can get started with patient C. So I hope that that didn't just sound too confusing to all of you, but see how that can just help so much. But in Ontario anyway, I tell people the restorative hygiene program is expensive. If you don't, if you're not working somewhere now where they want to utilize you as a restorative hygienist, I'm almost hesitant telling people to not take the course unless you are prepared to not work full time making tons of money right away because that simply won't happen. It might, depending on where you live, but at least in Ontario around here, not a lot of dentists know how to utilize us. I can almost utilize myself a lot more because I'm a restorative hygienist and a dentist works with me to kind of diagnose because I can't do that, right? But a dentist works with me to diagnose and say, yes, this patient does have a very little cavity. You can put in the silver diamine in that one because there is a chance that it's not going to get bigger. Or they say, okay, this is going to be a huge M-O-D-B-L. You can't just put silver diamine in there to kill the cavity. It needs something a lot more. I would be able to tell that too, but it's still, a dentist still needs to diagnose all of that, okay? So it kind of depends, but you know, I took the restorative hygiene program in Ottawa where it was about, at the time, about $10,000. It was a nine month program. I did that because it was Monday to Friday. There was another program in Toronto, George Brown College, where I don't know the price of that one because I didn't go, but that one was part time for a much longer period, but part time. And I didn't live in Toronto. I just kind of wanted to get in there, get it over with, get done because I had to move to Ottawa for about two months anyway because there is an online component and then the clinical component for two months. It was stressful, it was intense, but I'll talk more about that in my next video of what to expect with your hygiene program if you do decide to take your advanced skills as a restorative hygienist. So let me know, you guys, if you have any questions, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.