 Hello, everybody. Thank you for clicking this video. It is about dental hygiene burnout. Are you currently experiencing dental hygiene burnout? My guess is if you've clicked this video, you are and or you want to avoid that. So I take a lot of continuing education courses online. Thank you for online courses. It's not always easy for me to attend courses in person, but online, I can listen to it while I'm doing other things. So I was listening to a RDH burnout course by the CDHA, so the College of Dental Hygiene, or sorry, the Canadian Dental Hygienist Association. And it was talking about RDH burnout, so dental hygiene burnout. Basically, a lot of dental hygienists do experience this because in a dental office, we are basically seeing, oh, he or she is just the dental hygienist. Add another patient to that schedule, just added in. She can stay an extra hour behind at the end of the day. She can come in an hour earlier. She doesn't need a lunch. Five minutes is fine. Not to mention, we are expected to work not eight hours a day, but 10 hours a day. Our job isn't a simple nine to five clock in, clock out. If our first patient is nine, we have to be there at eight or 830. If our last patient is at five o'clock, well, what if they show up late and they're 10 minutes behind? We're now 10 minutes behind. We have to take notes in our chart after every patient. It's very easy to get behind. So burnout basically means we are working too much, too hard, and everybody can experience burnout, not even just the dental hygienists. In life, we can experience burnout. I have watched YouTube videos on switching it up to a four day work week, and this is where it's at because we just aren't meant to work 10 hours a day every day and then expect to be happy and healthy. That's just not how it works. I have actually followed this for many, many years. I have been a dental professional since I was 19. So for 18 years, I haven't worked full time as a dental professional probably since I was in my early 20s. I have always worked part time as a dental professional. I do, of course, have other businesses. So I am a tutor as well. I teach dental hygiene and dental assisting students online, but I kind of mix it up. So I'm still making a full time income. Some would say, Andrea, you're still working full time. You're actually busier than all of us, but I like to mix it up. If I was seeing patients for 10 hours every day, I would be so sore, so burnt out, so tired. You can only talk so much. You can only be on and ready to go for so much, at least when I'm working from home. Even when I'm doing this video for YouTube, I'm not on the same as I am seeing patients. You know, this is what I want to do. I make the time to do it. I don't have anybody telling me what to do when to do it. The thing about dental offices, unfortunately, is that dentists tell you what to do. You work for them. They want you to make the most money possible. If there's a no show, if a patient doesn't show up, a lot of dentists say, well, you're not being paid then. I'm not paying you per hour to do that. Some dentists or sorry, some dental hygienists work on a commission, so you get paid depending on what you bill out for that patient. I work for myself. So I am my own mobile dental hygienist. I clean teeth in patients homes, and I can't imagine going back to work for a dental office. I was tired, exhausted all the time. I felt bad calling in sick. I felt bad taking a vacation. We had to give six months notice to book time off. It was crazy, but this is how people experience burnout. We don't work four hours a day. We work 10 hours a day because that's what the dentist expects. We barely get a lunch. If we get a lunch, it's a quick snack, a quick granola bar in the back room, and to quickly use the washroom. But, oh, our next patients here early. We're expected to see them, so we're not behind. We can't call in sick. We get yelled at. Okay? I mean, please, correct me if I'm wrong. Are you allowed to call in sick? And people are probably thinking, you're a healthcare professional. How can you not call in sick? How are you not allowed? I don't want you working on me if you're sick. Well, guess what? Dentists, the office manager, whoever doesn't like us calling in sick. It was extremely stressful. Working for myself, I don't experience burnout. And why is that? Why is that? So how can you change things up in the dental office? I don't experience burnout because I make my own schedule, and this is going to be different for everybody. For example, I know if I see a family of five in one day, I should probably take the next day off because I'm going to be sore. I'm a mobile dental hygienist, so I have a portable chair. It's not the same as that chair you have in the dental office. I get very sore very easily. But if I take the next day off, I'm fine. But let's say I decided to see six patients every day and then take Saturday off. I would experience burnout. I wouldn't want to work. I'd be exhausted. I'd be cranky. The same goes for you in the dental office. You need to find what works for you. Maybe it would be better for you to take a Wednesday off. So that way you have time off in the middle of the week. So you work Monday and Tuesday, say eight hours, but then you have Wednesday off to kind of get things back together. You know, if you're sore, you have a day off or you just simply have a day off to run errands. Take it easy. Maybe you work half a day on Thursday and you take Friday off too if you're lucky. But a lot of us aren't that lucky. The dentist doesn't usually let us take off that many days. But find what works for you, whether that means taking a day off in the middle of the week, working half days Thursday and Friday or a half day on Monday, taking one week off every three months. Find what works for you and don't be afraid to bring that up. There are other offices out there. You do not want to experience burnout. You have a life too, I'm assuming. So you have many things to do after work. You probably have many things to do before work. Work is something you can actually work around, but your family isn't always something you can work around. You have to drive this child here, there, you have a spouse, you know, spend time with them. Have a good life, you guys. Work is something you can change. Of course, you have to make the money, but don't think, okay, I have to work 10 hours every day, but I'm exhausted. So my family is going to suffer. I'm not going to spend time with them because I have to spend Sunday sleeping. I don't know. Think about it in a different light. Think what can I do to make my work life easier? Because we all spend most of our life working. It's true. What can you do to make it easier? Taking time off, booking more vacation time, and I hate to say it. If your office doesn't let you do these things, find another office. There's many of them out there. Maybe you're not being paid enough. So it would make you feel so much better to make $5 more per hour or even just $2 more per hour. Talk about that with them, okay? It's so important not to get burnt out. As healthcare professionals, it's very easy to do. So many healthcare professionals during COVID actually quit their jobs and are doing something else because it was just too much, too much, too fast, and we were underappreciated. So it's a very important thing. So I hope this helps you guys. I hope this helps to give you something to think about, something to look at. If you need any advice, let me know. I do work for myself, but I did work in dental offices before, and I was never afraid to ask for time off. I was never afraid to ask for more money. I was never afraid to say, well, if you're not going to give me the Wednesday off, then I guess I'll go look somewhere else because I need a Wednesday off for my own sanity, okay? So pick and choose what you want to do, okay? I was never afraid to say that. So comment below if you need any help. Thank you guys for watching. Click like if you like this video because it helps me know what type of videos to do more of. Keep on coming back every Monday and Thursday where new videos are going to be uploaded. Thank you guys and we will talk soon. Good luck and don't experience burnout.