ELEVATE THE PROFESSION - ELEVATE YOUR PRACTICE

The dental hygiene profession has been building a research base, increasing professional autonomy, and growing in the influence it has on consumers, thereby requiring advanced thinking skills. Review the role of critical thinking in dental hygiene practice, what intellectual skills constitute critical thinking, and how you can improve your thinking skills.

Dental hygiene has a unique role in the health care industry. Consequently, the profession needs to produce researchers from within its ranks. Learn how researchers develop research questions and methods to answer those questions. Develop your skills in reading and understanding a research article, so you can apply that information in your practice.

Since the formation of dental hygiene as a profession, we have been in the process of professionalization. Professionalization occurs because consumers receive specialized, individualized, evidence-based services.  The profession has been gaining ground in its professional project by educating consumers and legislators, promoting the profession through consumer rights, liberal feminism, and codifying a research agenda that defines the theoretical framework of dental hygiene. 

Oral health professionals develop a sense of professional identity when motivated to enter a profession and continue throughout their education and career. This course will help participants understand professional identity, focusing on how it has developed in dental hygiene. Professionalization of dental hygiene through education and diversification of career paths can foster each member’s development of professional identity.

Dental hygienists’ growth as part of an interprofessional team is enhanced by emergence of dental hygiene as a recognized, influential profession. Dental hygienists’ critical roles as educators and preventive health specialists provide opportunities for leadership and collaboration. 

Dental hygienists elicit patient compliance with a self-care regimen by educating those patients to adopt effective behaviors that promote health.   Dental hygienists can provide effective educational intervention by applying evidence-based practice principles when diagnosing learning needs and planning individualized, patient-centered instruction. 

A critical feature of dental hygiene care is patient education. Identify the perceived and ideal roles of the dental hygienist as a patient educator and move instruction toward that ideal. Learning educational theories and analyzing case studies, participants will improve their understanding of learning as a gain in knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Participants will diagnose educaitonal needs and develop instructional plans.

Growth of social and traditional media has increased availability of health information and misinformation. Misinformation comes from pressure on researchers to publish, traditional media misinterpreting research, biased searches, and lack of a coordinated public health response to misinformation.  Be able to ensure that patients can discern accurate, relevant facts from opinions and misinformation.