 Hello everybody, Andrea here with Dental L. Let's talk about dental professionals and how is a shift like? How is the work environment like? What is it like? For example, we all know that nurses don't work a couple hours a day. They're doing 12-hour shifts, okay? They're working hard, okay? What about dental professionals? So a lot of people think, I don't know, I kind of feel like there's a lot of myths out there. When I was in school, I was always told, oh, well, you should definitely be a dental professional because they get to pick time off, they get holidays, they get this, they get paid lunches, paid lunch breaks, all of that. Well, let me tell you how it's actually like. And granted, it's probably different depending on the office and different on the location, but I'm gonna burst your bubble a little bit, okay? So when I used to work in a dental office, so right now I have my own dental hygiene practice in Ontario, we can have our own dental hygiene practices. So to be more specific, I'm a mobile dental hygienist. So I don't work for a dentist anymore, it's been a couple of years now, I love it. But when I used to work in a dental office, let me tell you how it's really like. It's not a nine to five job. If you're a first patient's at nine, you want to be there for 815, 830 at the very latest because that helps you set up, that helps you go through your charts, go through your schedule for the day because once you get started, you won't have time to click on that patient of the day and go through all of that then. I'll tell you why, because let's say you're seeing eight patients a day, it's typically one patient per hour. So if you're there for eight hours, a lunch, that kind of thing. In some offices, a child patient is 30 minutes, adult patient is 45 minutes to 60 minutes, but you're going to be behind. Working in healthcare, you're talking to people. What if your first patient is 10 minutes late? Well, you can't clean less teeth. You can't say, sorry, you were 10 minutes late, I'm gonna clean four less teeth so I stay on time. That's not how it works. You'll have patients who have great oral hygiene where you're like, oh, that took me 45 minutes, no problem. And I cleaned the whole mouth, that was great. You'll have other patients that really need your help. They have heavy stain, heavy tartar. You're working away for the full hour, you're working really hard, you might even be an hour and 10 minutes. So you're going to be behind for your next patient. You cannot say to that patient, depending on the office, I suppose, there's a lot of plaque there, there's a lot of tartar there, we can't finish today. Although having that said, what I used to do in the office, if the patient hadn't been in for two years or more, I would tell them, we're probably only going to be able to clean half your mouth today because it's been two years. Imagine not cleaning your oven in two years. You're not going to be able to get it all in an hour. But typically, if your patient comes every six to nine months, you should be able to get it all done in that hour appointment or 45 minutes, depending on what you have. But then there's x-rays, some patients need x-rays, some patients do not. So for some patients, you'll be done early, some patients, you might be a bit behind, but this is why you need to review your charts and everything at the beginning of the day. I would even go so far as to set up my full tray. I would have not eight trays there, but I would have four trays. So in the morning, my four patients, I would have lunch and then four patients in the evening. I would set up my trays, like put them away, but they would be set up with the instruments in the packaging. I would have the profi paste on there. I would have the handpiece on there to do the polish. I would have the gauze, kind of what I needed for that patient. Even a toothbrush to remind myself to give them a toothbrush, but that's very easy to remember anyway. Organization is key. Let's talk about lunches. Are you going to get a lunch? I never got a lunch, but I was always behind because I'm a chatterbox, you guys. I talk to my patients, I take the extra time. I would maybe get a half an hour lunch if I was lucky. So I would bring granola bars. I would bring like little yogurts. I don't even remember, it's been years. Like veggies in a Ziploc bag, and I would actually keep them in my operatory so that between patients, I would quickly have a bite or two. That was my lunch. So if you're expecting to get a full hour lunch every day, that would be amazing. I hope you do, but you probably won't. In my 16 years of working, I never got a full hour lunch. If I did, it was because the patient before lunch didn't show up, so I had time. That's the only time. So if you're expecting to bring a three course meal to eat in the lunchroom, it's not gonna be you. It's not gonna be you. The dental receptionists get a full hour lunch usually. The dental assistants don't even either. Like the dental assistants, the hygienists don't usually get a full hour lunch because we're the ones with patients and there's just one of us usually. The dental receptionists, there's usually two or three of them at the front so they can kind of cover for one another. When I was a receptionist, I always got a lunch. So that's why I say that. In the same office too. So I kind of know how things worked, right? You're not going, again, you're not gonna have a nine to five job. If your last patient's at five or let's say you're done at five, you're not going to be done at five. Don't make plans for five, 10. Don't do it, trust me. If I was done at five, I would be happy to be out of there by six. Does that make sense? Usually I'd be out of there by five, 30. Five, 45 is more realistic, especially if I was behind. If you're 10 minutes behind, it adds up throughout the day. And you can't just leave at five o'clock and like leave your dirty instruments and stuff, right? There's always things to do at the end of the day. So after every patient, you will be cleaning up your tray, sterilizing the instruments or leaving them for whoever's working in the sterilization area to do for you. But if you don't have that, if it's a small office, you will be doing them between patients. And you're always, of course, disinfecting the room between patients. This doesn't take 30 seconds. It takes a couple of minutes. You might be saying, oh, a couple of minutes, that's no big deal. But when you're 10 minutes behind and then taking five minutes to disinfect, you're now 15 minutes behind and your next patient's mad at you. It's not a nice thing, right? So don't expect to leave at five o'clock because you'll be cleaning up the room disinfecting. But then at the end of the day, you have to run the water lines with disinfectant through the lines. That takes a couple minutes. You might have to shock the system. I shock my system once a week, sometimes once a month, if I'm not using my compressor unit that much, that can take 20 to 25 minutes. So you're not gonna be out of there at five o'clock. Plus, always help other staff members. I would never just clean up my stuff and then say, see ya. Audio, see you guys in the morning. If somebody's behind or if somebody's sterilizing, there's a ton of instruments, I'm going to help them, okay? I'm not gonna stay to do their work for them and then have them leave, but I'm going to help them. So maybe it takes us 10 minutes and not that one person 20 minutes. Do you get it? Or let's say your poor dental assistant is so behind, go into her room. And she's probably assisting the dentist here, she, just tap her on the shoulder and say, can I help you with anything? She might, he or she might say to you, can you tell my next patient we're gonna be another 10 minutes? I would really appreciate it. That's all you have to do and they'd be so happy. Maybe you want to help the receptionist file charts. I would do that after every night, by the way. Every night I would go to the front desk and say, do you need help filing charts? Because I was a dental receptionist. I know how things worked and that would just be so helpful. It might take five minutes, it might take 10 minutes but that receptionist has 20 million things to do anyway. So that 10 minutes is saving them time and they appreciate it and then guess what? When they can help you one day, they will, hopefully, hopefully, right? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. So always ask for help. So being a dental professional, you're always working with a team, okay? Always, even a dental hygienist, we work ourselves, we get the dentist when we need a check but we're primarily our own provider. We're working for ourselves. The dental assistant, she or he's always working with the dentist, staff, they're not working by themselves. They're working with the dentist, always somebody else but any dental professional, you're working as a team. If you expect to be in your own little cubicle, your own little world per se or you just don't like dealing with people, the dental profession is absolutely not for you. No, I don't know if you're making phone calls in an office, like you're in charge of the re-care calls, like to book clients in for the next appointment. Maybe I guess you don't have to be liking people too much per se but a dental professional that we're always around people. So I love being a dental professional, by the way. I'm not trying to scare anybody but I'm trying to tell you how it is because I hear lots of people say, oh, you must have such a cushy job. It's so, you're working at dental office, what's the big deal? Holy heck, no, it's busy. It's busy, you don't get a lunch, you don't work nine to five, you have to arrive early, you have to stay late, shifts can be eight, nine, 10 hours or you might not get enough hours. They hire a lot of part-time dental professionals so they don't have to pay benefits. We don't often get benefits anymore. When we wanna take a holiday when I used to work in offices we would have to give them like six months notice which is crazy in my opinion but we'd have to give them six months notice. If we called in sick, we'd get yelled at. Maybe not yelled at, I'm sorry, maybe not yelled at but they'd be like, are you sure? You have a full patience, you have a full schedule today. Are you really gonna call in sick? Yeah, I'm sick, I'm a healthcare professional. It would make no sense for me to be coughing and puking all over that poor patient. Crazy, right? Hey, I tell it how it is. You can't just call a temp agency to bring in a dental professional these days. It just doesn't happen. There are temp agencies to hopefully help you out but it's very hard to find one that's willing to work because it's very hard to go into different offices and pretend you know what you're doing because you have different systems, different dentists who like things a certain way. The X-ray machines might be different, the operatory might be different. So I have another video about temp dental hygienists. If you want to listen to that, definitely do a search on my channel because I was a temp dental hygienist as well. I go through the pros and cons and why being a temp dental hygienist might actually be better for you versus being in one practice only. So I did both. So I definitely kind of help you guys with that too. So I hope this helps kind of a day in the life a little bit like behind the scenes of a dental professional and how our schedule and day is like and how you can kind of get organized a bit too. I kind of mentioned that so you're not too far behind. Let me know if any questions, comment below you guys. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys very soon.