 Hello everybody, Andrea Mayeski here with Dental L. So I have been a Dental L tutor for about 14 years now. I have been a clinical hygienist as well. I work currently two to three days a week and I own my own dental hygiene practice, Dental L mobile hygiene where I go to nursing homes and I go to homes to clean people's teeth and do whitening, so I love it. But let me talk to you guys about something that isn't always talked about and it's true. So not to be negative. This is not meant to be a negative video at all, but in case you're curious, what are some things that dental hygienists complain about? We all love what we do. I mean, most of us, hopefully, or you shouldn't be a dental hygienist, you need to retire if you don't like it or do something else. But what do we all complain about, okay? So let me talk to you about what that is. I know for me the number one thing that I complain about is office drama. Office drama, which is why I own my own business. I don't work full-time at a dental office, not because of office drama, but it helps me to avoid that because I'm not there all the time. And it's true, when you get a bunch of ladies together, we have drama. I don't know how else to say it, but it's so true. You don't have to like everybody and that's what I always say, but you should be able to get along with people. But sometimes that's not the case. When you have dental receptionists, you have dental assistants, you have dental hygienists, you have dentists. Sometimes you have an office manager. We all have very strong personalities, I feel. We all feel that we're the best at what we do, but sometimes with different personalities mixed in, the office can get a little hectic. Somebody thinks they're the most amazing when they're really not. Somebody is slacking off, but they still think they're amazing. You get the idea. So that is something that a lot of hygienists do complain about is just simply office drama. And when you work for an amazing office with an amazing staff, it makes all the difference. Imagine working with your friends. It would just be so much better, right? Than working with people you don't really like all the time. Well, that's pretty much the case. And where office drama comes into play is if let's say I'm running half an hour behind, it would be nice to ask somebody to help me out. But where office drama comes into play is, well, nobody will want to help me out because they're doing their own thing. They have their own stuff that they have to do. Yet when they need help, I don't have time to help them because I'm doing hygiene stuff, but they see it as being mean, you know. And I'm not talking about me or my office, but just kind of like a situation, right? Kind of like a scenario. So that's a little problem sometimes. But another thing that we complain about is always running behind. We do, we run behind, not because we're sitting in the back having a coffee, but if a patient's five minutes late, we're going to run five minutes behind because we can't do more work in less time. Patients will come in and say, yeah, I'm kind of in a hurry. Can you hurry up with this cleaning today? And I'm thinking, so do you want me to do every other tooth then? Because I can't just hurry up with the cleaning. I either clean the teeth properly or I don't. So it's kind of annoying to be running behind when it's not our fault. The next patient blames you that you're behind, not the patient, not the dentist, what they blame you. So that's kind of tough to run behind because we get yelled at by patients and that means we don't get a lunch sometimes. We don't get a dinner. If you work nine to five, it doesn't mean you're out of there at five o'clock. You're out of there five, 30 or six, depending on how far you ran behind. And that's another thing that we do often complain about. Oh, sorry guys, I heard something. Just the mailman. And that's something that we also, I'll let my dog stop. Sorry guys. There's so loud sometimes. There guys, sorry about that. Hopefully you can't still hear them barking but they are kind of barking a little bit just downstairs because the mailman can't. Darn, where was I? I was talking about running behind, right? Yes. But I did have another train of thought. Darn, but now I can't remember. Running behind, running behind. That's okay. I'll think of something else. So another thing that we often complain about is having to do more in less time. As a dental hygienist, we constantly have more responsibilities. We're not getting paid more. We're not, I mean, usually. We're not getting paid more. We're not being thanked. It just seems we have so much more to do in less time because the dental office wants to make more money per patient and they try to always see how to do that. Meaning they might say to us, do not forget to take x-rays once a year. Do not forget to recommend this, recommend that. It's like, okay, if I'm taking x-rays now on every single person once per year, then you should give me another five minutes per appointment time. Doesn't seem like a lot but when patients are 10 minutes late consistently, you're now 15 minutes behind because you have to do more in each appointment. Do you get what I'm saying? So we tend to complain about that too. We always have to do more in less time and usually not more money. And now I just thought of what I was talking about before is in normal jobs, if you work a nine to five shift, you're probably out of there like 905, right? Not if you work in healthcare. So this is the same for dental assistants too. If you have a nine to five shift, you have to show up at 830 to get charts ready. You have to set up the room. You have to look through your charts. You have to usually have a morning meeting with the rest of the office. Look through the x-rays, do a little bit of everything. So it's not nine to five. You have to show up at 830. Normal offices or normal jobs get a one hour lunch. Well, if our patients are running behind, we don't get that hour lunch because we run into hour lunch. On our lunch, we usually, I don't think I've ever had an hour lunch to be honest. Half an hour if I'm lucky. And that's quickly heating up my food for five minutes, using the washroom, sitting down for maybe 10 minutes and then being like, oh yeah, I forgot to do something for my next patient and then having to reset up again, right? So we don't get full hour lunches usually. And I talked about it too. If you have let's say a nine to five shift, you're not going to be done at five o'clock. A, because if you're behind, you have to finish up the patient, you can't just leave. And B, you have to clean up everything afterwards, right? You have to clean up your instruments, masks, bib, gloves, all of that. Put it through the sterilizer, make sure it goes through. You have to take your notes after every patient. And we don't get extra time to do that, you guys. That's all in that one hour or less depending on the office appointment slot that you have. So if you're really, really good at taking notes, okay, it might not take you long, but if you have to take a lot of notes that day, oh my goodness, it's gonna take time, right? So we're not done at five. Don't bother telling whoever's waiting for you at home that you'll probably be done by five, 10. You never know. I never know. I'm usually done at the one office where I work. I'm done at seven. It's never seven. And sometimes it is earlier if a patient doesn't show up. Yay, sorry, I hate to say it, but sometimes we get excited when we have no shows because it means we can take a break or it means that we can leave early. But I've never done at seven. I'm never home seven, 30 or whatever. I just never know. In fact, if I'm done at seven, I tell my husband I'll be home by eight o'clock. Just in case, seriously, and I am usually home just before eight o'clock. It takes me about 15 minutes to get home, but if you're accounting for cleaning up time, setting up for the next day, looking at charts if you have time, using the washroom, having a quick snack, things like that, it takes time. Another thing we complain about, what else do we complain about, guys? If there's anything that you guys complain about, leave comments and we will talk about it. Because I now work in my own business and I don't complain about anything with that because I love it. The only hard part is since I'm a mobile dental hygienist, I lug all of my stuff into the patient's home so it takes about three trips, maybe, but that's it. But anyways, talking about the real office is again, aha. We always complain because we don't have sharp instruments because when are we gonna have time to sharpen our instruments? Think about it, you guys. So then we have to work with dull instruments. We get annoyed. Dull instruments means it takes longer to take off the calculus. But when are we gonna sharpen them? Are we gonna sharpen them after work? Well, when we're exhausted from the day, not being able to eat lunch, not being able to eat dinner because our patient was behind and we've been yelled at the whole day, I'm not gonna sharpen my instruments then. Am I gonna come in even earlier to sharpen them? Well, yes, maybe, but we don't get paid for coming in earlier, we don't. So the only time that we have time to sharpen the instruments is if the patient doesn't show up or if the patient's late and then we can quickly do them at that time. So another thing that we complain about. A lot of offices these days, we don't get vacation, sorry, we don't get a good vacation package, I guess I should say. Even at the last office where I was there for 13 years, I had two weeks vacation time. Whereas in normal occupations, it gets extended per year that you're working there. Not in dental unless you work for an amazing office. The dentists and the offices can pick and choose what they give you. We don't get a pension. We don't get bonuses unless you work for an office that gives bonuses. We don't get anything extra. We don't get insurance, we don't get benefits. So that can be a little bit tricky too. So that I would say is a big one that we complain about. We work so hard, we work in healthcare. We make people's lives better yet. We don't have a pension, we don't have insurance. We don't get benefits. When we take vacation, it's usually if the dentist is taking vacation time, then we have to take that time because the office is closed. We don't always get to pick our own days off or we have to ask two months in advance what days we want off. A lot of occupations don't have that. Some do, some don't. So yeah, we tend to complain about that too. But all in all you guys, I wouldn't change it for a thing. I love being a dental hygienist. But you all know I have my own business tutoring and I have my own business as a dental, as a mobile dental hygienist. So I like doing my own thing because I can rearrange my own schedule and work that way. But would I not be a dental hygienist if all of this was just what it was like? No, I would still be it because you know, going into it, you're not gonna have insurance, you're not gonna have benefits, but you get paid more than a lot of people. You do. Yes, at the end of the day, it might work out evenly because that other person gets insurance, a pension benefits, but just depends on what you wanna do. Are you going to become an IT technician because they have full benefits? I'm not, I don't care. I prefer to not get benefits. Plus me working for myself means, you know, there's a lot of things that I'm never going to be able to get, but am I not gonna work for myself because I don't get certain insurance benefits like Matt leave. No, I'm gonna work for myself because I'm my own boss. So it just kind of depends on what you wanna do. But I hope that helped you guys. I thought that that was just like kind of a fun video. People always ask, like what's the pros and cons of being a dental hygienist? Well, here it is, right there. I've been in the dental profession for 14 years and these are probably the things that I complained about. But thank you guys for watching. Please leave comments if I forgot something because I probably did. I'll see you guys in the next one. Thanks again for watching. Have a good weekend.