Dental offices are made up of a lot of different team members. We dove into some of the roles in a couple previous episodes, but today we are talking all things dental hygienist. What do dental hygienists do and how do they operate within a dental practice? Let’s dive in.

SIDE NOTED: We are not only rounding off this segment of “who’s who in the dental office”, but we are also rounding off season 1! We have enjoyed having you all on this journey and can’t wait to see you in season 2! We will still be active on all our socials so drop us a line. Don’t be a stranger!

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As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

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Transcript:

Well, well, welcome back to another episode. I’m Dr. Mike. – And I’m Dr. Rusty. – And we’re two general dentists practicing in Portland, Oregon. – Welcome back to our podcast, DM a dentist. – In today’s episode, we’re talking about our final team member in the who’s who in the dental office. This is part three, and we’re talking about the dental hygienist. – The hygienist? You mean the cornerstone of the dental office? – You mean the boss? – Yeah, basically the boss. – They’re kind of in charge, it seems like. – The boss, sometimes, you know. – My boss, day to day. – We love our hygienists, but you know. – Yeah, but they run the place. – They do. – Yeah, in a lot of ways, they do keep the office running. And keep a lot of things. – Absolutely. – Systems running, recall patients coming through. I mean, hygienist is important. – I mean, does your hygienist or does your hygienist? Does your patients say, “Hey, I wanna see you” or they wanna see the hygienist? – Oh, for sure. They request a hygienist. They build a relationship with them. You know, the hygienist is like the bread and butter of the practice. It’s bringing people through to get exams. And I mean, they’re coming back to see the hygienist though. They build a relationship with them. They’re not coming to see me. – No, they wanna see Vonda, or Sam, or Angela. Any of you all that are amazing. – Yeah. – But when they’re in their chair, they’re happy. They’re getting their teeth clean, things are good. When they’re in my chair, it’s ’cause they need something more. So typically, patients are just happier, I think, when they’re coming for a hygiene visit. ‘Cause they’re– – Yeah, it’s like a real spa day. – Yeah, it’s basically– – Yeah, it’s a treatment. Yeah. – Something crazy. – But what is a role of a hygienist? I mean, you know, we talked a little bit about some of the roles. What are they called? – Dental nurses. – Dental nurse. – Yeah, so are dental nurses? – As you all know, they’re not dental nurses. – Yeah, if you listened to our early episodes, no one in the dental office is called a nurse. So y’all better know that if not go back in with then I think it was the assistant– – Listen to a different one. – Yeah. – These are what we’re talking today about dental hygienist, not dental nurses. So yeah, what are they? – The hygienists, they’re really involved. So they’re providers of the office too, right? They’re licensed in a similar way to the dentist or license. By the state, they have to go...

There are many team members that make up a dental office. This is Part 2 of our three part series on “Who’s Who in the Dental Office”. This week we talk to two dental assistants as they share what its like being a dental assistant. They answer some of your most pressing questions and share some fun stories. Tune in as Roxy and Diego join us on the show and share some insight into the world of dental assisting.

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As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

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Audio Transcript:

Welcome to DM Adentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast where Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear. Well, welcome back! Today we have two special guests for our next interview series, Who’s Who in the Dental Office Part 2. Today we have two of our dental assistants. We have Roxy and Diego, two of my favorites. Roxy, how long have you been a dental assistant? I’ve been a dental assistant for about 10 years now. Okay, awesome. And Diego, what about you? Been a dental assistant for about 7 years now. Okay, nice, love it, love it, okay. And you know, I know a lot of people, you know, we talked about it previously in our basic introduction to The Who’s Who about like the dental assistant roles and things, but a lot of people aren’t familiar with what a dental assistant, some people haven’t called a dental nurse to do, right? How would you describe what you all do on a day to day? You know, I feel like we’re honestly the doctors right hand. We do a lot that I feel like the patients don’t necessarily see. We welcome the patients, we triage the patients. We do a little bit of everything, honestly. So triage, what is that like if a new patient is coming in or like they have a problem, like what do you mean by triage? So we will sit the patient down and kind of figure out what’s going on with the patient and let the doctor know we, there’s a lot of communication with what we do. So just kind of communicating with what the patient tells us and then letting the doctor know what is going on. So the patient doesn’t feel like they are repeating themselves. True. Yeah, that’s important because a lot of times I feel like that’ll happen where you know, they come in and they’re like, hey, this tooth is hurting me. It happened X amount of days ago. And then I come in and I’m like, hey, what’s going on? And then like this tooth broke. It happened X amount of days ago. I just told them that I feel like patients really are eyes along when they have to repeat themselves. So if I can limit that, that’s great. But yeah, we do, we do a lot that people don’t necessarily see. For sure, a lot of behind the scene stuff too, right? Like all the like sterilization, like slipping room, setting up rooms, helping chair side, like tons of rolls that you all have in the office for sure. So, and another big role I think that the dental assistant has is to like help chair side with patients, right? A lot of patients that are coming are really anxious or nervous to be there, right? Like being in the dental chair isn’t the most fun experience. We get it. So like what are some things that you c...

The Olympic Games have dominated TV screens for the past few weeks and sadly have come to an end. The US pulled off the win with medal count, but tied China for number of gold medals. Gold is so coveted, but did you know dentists have been using gold to restore teeth longer than the Olympic Games have been using gold to signify victory? Yep. You heard that right. In this episode Dr. Mike and Dr. Rusty chat about gold in dentistry and other common materials used to restore teeth!

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As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

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Transcript:

Welcome to DM A Dentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast where Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear. Welcome back! We are back! It’s been a little while since we put out an episode, but we’re really excited to be back. I know Rusty, it’s been like a busy summer, man. Yeah, we’ve been out hiking and camping, backpacking, I think you’ve been to a couple weddings. Concerts. Yeah, all the summer things. Yeah, now mention our exciting news coming up too. We have a new podcast studio. So we’ve been in the process of moving studios, sorry, we’ve been a little behind on the content, but yeah, we’re excited. We’re almost moved into our new place. No promises. I don’t know when we’ll be done getting it ready. Yeah, new place. Yeah, so we’re still in our original studio as you can see, but I’m super excited to show you the new space as we get moving into the air and as we get set up in the new space, so can’t wait to show you all what happens. Yeah, super excited about that. It’ll be awesome, but I’m also super excited about the Olympics. It’s been great. We just finished up this past week. Yeah, and USA with the overall win. Yeah. I saw you know we… Hey. You said… You said… Yeah, we had a tight China with 40 gold medals, but we got the overall medal count because we got more silver and bronze than they did. Yeah, I think USA ended up with a total of 126 medals. Yep. China had 91, so we got them there. So beat them by a size of a amount. Overall medal count is nice, but we know it’s gold that matters, and we tied them there 40-40, but got the overall count. True. Yeah, and funny, funny you say that. The gold was first given out at the Olympics in 1904 in St. Louis, so that was like the first gold medal, which is… Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it’s been around a long time, yeah, the common thing. Yeah. And the Olympics have obviously been around a lot longer than that, but gold, yeah, just surpassed 100 and so years, 100 and a little over that. But gold has also been used in dentistry actually for a lot longer than it’s been used in the Olympics. Gold was used, you know, at least 2,500 years ago, maybe a little bit further back than that too. Wow. Yeah, cool, very cool. Yeah, so it’s very old, isn’t it? It is. It’s been around thousands of years, and I would say the most common use was like to replace missing teeth and to help, you know, like reattach or form of a false tooth with gold, or, you know, various other things gold was used for, like, you know, thousands years ago. Gold used in jewelry, even back in the days, using like cosmetic things for a while, kind of like tooth gems tod...

In this episode Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike round up all the DMs you all have sent in. They hit the topics of “waterpik vs string floss” to “can I rinse my mouth with urine” (yes someone really sent that question in). And that goes to say…if you ask it…they’ll answer it. So tune in, this episode is a wild ride.

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As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

Transcript:

Welcome to DM A dentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast where Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear. Well, well, welcome back everybody to another episode of DM A dentist. It feels really good to be back in the podcast studio. We took a little two-week hiatus for, you know, Fourth of July, been doing some camping and stuff, so it feels good to be back. It’s been good. It’s also been pretty hot, so we took a little bit of break. True. But this week had some big news. It did. It did. You know, officially, I think we can call it Mike, but politicians are officially more hated than Dentists. Jesus. It’s like, it’s insane that we had an assassination attempt. Yeah. I mean, it definitely is wild. I can’t believe it happened, honestly, you know, at least, I guess the Secret Service had a quick escape route, so, you know, Trump was able to just get in the van and go’ed. Right? Right? You get it? No! Sorry, sorry, y’all. What an eerie feeling. But anyway, I mean, in all seriousness, that’s terrifying that that’s happening. I mean, we should not live in a nation that we have to deal with this, regardless of the party you’re involved in, right? Like, insane. Well, I’m living a country that we are even making light of it. Of course, it’s a very serious thing, and we’re not taking it lightly. Regardless of what side of the street you live on, you know, violence is never the answer, and doing something like this isn’t going to help our situation as a country at all. Yeah. It’s completely unacceptable, which we all know that, and honestly, our thoughts in Paris, well, to everyone involved, because it’s terrifying and scary. Even if you’re the president, it’s scary to deal with that, so. Right, so. We definitely need to come together as a country so this stops happening. And, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, let’s, I know that’s a tough subject, but let’s dive in today’s episode in. I hope you’re all ears for this one. Oh, all ears, all ears. Today’s episode is DM deBrief number one. So, debrief, debrief, debrief. So our goal with the podcast, again, you may have heard this if you’ve listened or tuned in before, but our goal with the podcast is to be too done as here answering your questions. And the best way that you can do that is to ask us questions. I mean, that’s the only way we’re going to be able to help you is if you let us know what kind of content you want to see from us, send it our way, send us questions, send us videos, you don’t know what they are if they make sense if they’re real. Help us help you because that’s really what we’re here for. Yeah. So let’s dive into our first DMD brief and get to the questions. So our first question is from LaRie. So her question was, how often should the dental hygienist or dentist check the depth pockets between the bone and the gum? Yeah. So what she’s referring to is when you get a par...

Root canals are often associated with pain. And…we get it…15 years ago, dentistry was still thought of as a painful experience. Many of you may still view a trip to the dentist as a painful experience…But, Dr. Mike and Dr. Rusty are here to tell you root canals have come a long way.

So for this episode, we wanted to talk about root canals: what they are and why we do them. Dr. Mike and Dr. Rusty breakdown the symptoms that my lead you to think you need a root canal, what to expect during the procedure, and even address some of the misinformation out there about root canals. So tune in, you don’t want to miss this one!

As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

By now, we have all seen the “Hawk Tuah” girl. So why don’t we talk about saliva and what it does for you? Just so we’re all on the same page: saliva does a lot more than you think. In this episode, Dr. Mike and Dr. Rusty talk about all things saliva: the good, the bad, and the ugly. They finally answer the question that’s on everyone’s mind (apparently, because we’ve received SO many messages in our inbox about this): “Can my dentist tell when I’ve performed oral sex?”. Okay, maybe the questions are worded differently than that, but you get my point. Tune in to today’s episode to figure out if we can tell.

As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

Transcript:

Welcome to DM Adentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast where Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear. Welcome back to another episode of DM Adentist, I’m Dr. Mike and I’m Dr. Rusty. Today’s episode is going to get into a little bit of a spicy topic if you couldn’t tell from the title of our episode. Our topic today will be for a bit of an older audience so make sure the little ones ears are closed. It’s not per se inappropriate but you know 18 and up would be great. Yeah, we’ll be talking about a few different topics, some things ranging from saliva and then we’ll get into things like swap and spit and even oral sex at the end so be sure to stick around for the big finish. We wanted to break down a couple basics of what saliva is made up and then follow that up with the question we get pretty frequently which is can my dentist tell that I’ve given oral sex? If you guys ask me that one more time, I swear. We definitely got that question a lot, I know there’s been some videos that have gone around tick-tock and Instagram and stuff that say your dentist can or cannot so we’ll definitely dive into that but we don’t want to be too premature here so let’s start from the beginning, Mike. Yeah and it’s important to start from the beginning so like in Genesis 1-1 in the beginning God created the heavens in the earth. Okay, okay. The very first sin was a woman who ate. Oh my god, come on back to the podcast please. Okay, so let’s start with the basics, right? We know everyone has saliva, right? And it’s so it must be important because evolutionarily we’ve not gotten rid of it. So what makes up saliva? Well evolutionarily or when you’re just talking about Genesis in the beginning so. Do not catch me in a lie. Either way, saliva has stuck around and it’s very important. What do you think makes it so important, Mike? It has a couple of key ingredients, Rusty and I think those key ingredients are what makes it important. So let’s talk about what makes up saliva. So saliva is made up of mostly water and proteins and salt and electrolytes. Look at you guys. That’s probably the most of of what it’s made up of. So I would say it’s how much of how much of that do I make per day? You make anywhere between a half a liter to one and a half liter per day on average for most people, that’s the amount of saliva that you’re going to be making. So you know, like imagine a two liter or a thing of soda or whatever, not quite one of those all the way somewhere between one quarter to three quarters of that full of saliva a day. Again, most of that like 99% of that is going...

Did you know that your dentist checks for oral cancer during your exam? Do you know if Zyn, chewing tobacco, or cigarettes can contribute to your risk of developing oral cancer? Today’s guest episode welcomes Jack, whose great questions prompt a discussion on the risks of various forms of nicotine consumption, which have the potential to cause oral cancer, gum recession, tooth staining, and a whole host of problems with oral health. We discuss the importance of making informed choices for maintaining a healthy smile as it relates to the use of these various nicotine-containing substances.

As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

Welcome to DM A dentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast where Dr. Rusty and Dr. Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear.

Well, welcome back to another episode of a DM A dentist.

My name is Dr. Mike and we have someone else in the chair today. Hey, my name is Jack. I’m literally in the chair. I’m solely a patient. Oh, so we have someone that’s familiar with the dental chair, not that he is bad teeth, but he just, you know, the other side, I don’t sit in the dental chair much, but he does. So we’re going to get his perspective today. Thanks for having me. I know nothing about dentistry except from the patient’s perspective. So I’m just going to kind of ask questions and, you know, hopefully represent the audience at large. Representing the crowd. There you go. So today, we’re actually going to tackle something that’s been on the market recently, nicotine, especially with the use. That’s good stuff. So yeah, we’re going to dive into that. So welcome back and let’s get rolling. Cool. So one thing I wanted to talk about was Zyns in particular. I feel like in the last couple of years, there’s been a rise of different nicotine products and, you know, admittedly, I’ve used Zyns. Yeah. I know people who use Zyns daily all day. And they think that it’s safer because there’s no tobacco in it. You know, it’s easy. There’s no smoke. And so they think it’s a safer alternative, but I kind of get the feeling that maybe that that’s not true. Well, from a cancer perspective, Zyns have a lower risk of cancer incidents, which is good. So that’s something that it’s better in terms of to get your nicotine from a Zin than it is from a cigarette because the propensity for cancerous from a cigarette is much higher than that of a Zin. Right. Because cigarettes have so many additives and from aldehyde and a bunch of other products that are not products. But, you know, content that are harmful to the human body at large. But like, so why, I guess my question is, would be like, why is Zyn so bad? For me, my first thought is just not knowing anything about teeth, right? It’s just you’re putting it directly against your gum. It burns. Yeah. That can’t be good. Yeah. So what, like, so the thing that the problem with Zyns is it’s not necessarily like a cancer thing, even though you can probably get cancer from a Zin in dental school, we learned about smokeless tobacco and the incidence of cancers very low from smokeless tobacco. You might say like Zyns are the new age of like, uh, dipping. Stuff. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, but the problem with Zyns is if you put it in the location and continually put it in that location,...

Last week we talked about the various positions that make up a dental office. There were quite a few followup questions asking us to expand on some of the job descriptions. So, we decided to start a series of “who’s who in the dental office”. This will be a 3 part series and we are starting off strong with the business team. This week Bonnie Kost is joining us and talking about all things related to dental insurance. She explains the difference between medical insurance and dental insurance, dives into some insurance nuances to look out for when choosing a dental plan, and gives you some tips to help you maximize your benefits. You don’t want to miss this episode!

As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourdailydoseofdental/

Website: https://doseofdental.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dmadentist

Ashley 00:00:02 Welcome to DM, a dentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast, where doctor Rusty and doctor Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear.

Dr. Mike 00:00:24 Alrighty, so I have Bonnie with us today. Say hello, Bonnie.

Bonnie 00:00:28 Hello. Well, hello, everyone.

Dr. Mike 00:00:29 This is Bonnie. She’s been working in dental for how long now?

Bonnie 00:00:33 About ten years now. I started in the back.

Dr. Mike 00:00:36 Start in the back.

Bonnie 00:00:37 We talked about that last week.

Dr. Mike 00:00:38 So what is back?

Bonnie 00:00:40 Back office is being a dental assistant, being a hygienist, being a dentist. So front office does everything up front. So we push the paper and do all of the insurance and scheduling, and back does everything else for us.

Dr. Mike 00:00:58 So, yeah. Like clinical versus business team.

Bonnie 00:01:01 Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Mike 00:01:02 So, yeah, Bonnie’s been doing this for a while, so we had her on the show. I know we talked about last week, what are the different roles in the dental office? And this week we decided, why not talk to someone who does it for a living?

Bonnie 00:01:13 I do do it for a living. I am technically a finance coordinator, which is a fancy way of saying, I tell you how much everything’s gonna cost.

Dr. Mike 00:01:22 So you would say you are well versed in the insurances, eh?

Bonnie 00:01:27 I have so much knowledge of insurance that sometimes it hurts. There are thousands of different plans out there, and our goal is always to know as much as we possibly can in order for our patients to get the most out of their benefits.

Dr. Mike 00:01:43 And it’s hard. Cause it’s always. You were saying earlier, it’s always a moving scale, right?

Bonnie 00:01:47 Yes. Sometimes it does feel like we’re on a little bit of quicksand. Like, say anything is an absolute, and it changes every January. So every January, we have a big push to rediscover every dental plan that we have coming into our offices.

Dr. Mike 00:02:09 That’s wild. So they change a lot.

Bonnie 00:02:10 They change quite a bit, actually. And I will call it frustrating, but it’s also, you know, that is just how our country is ran with dental insurance currently.

Dr. Mike 00:02:23 And the bad thing is I will do things in the back and, like, treatment plan all these things and get all excited, and then I’m like, oh, it’s probably covered. Who knows?

Bonnie 00:02:32 And it’s no...