Dental Hygienist Training

Dental Hygienist Training - What Are The Requirements?

Dental hygienist training is intensive and challenging, requiring you to prepare with appropriate courses before you can even enrol and then study from 2-4 years before becoming licensed.

Requirements for Dental Hygienist Training

If you want a career where you educate patients on good oral health, assist a dentist in removing excess saliva and performing preventative treatments, and work on taking and developing x-rays and making teeth molds, you need to know how to get started.

Finishing high school is mandatory, and to give yourself a better chance at being accepted, you need to have taken classes in biology, chemistry, math and have good interpersonal skills and manual dexterity. Also, about half of all dental hygienist programs require you to have completed at least 1 year of college prior to applying.

There are 265 programs in the US that are accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation, so look into which dental hygienist requirements you can fulfill to choose the school that is best for you.

Course Curriculum

A good dental hygienist education will lead to either an associate's degree in 2 years, or for more advanced studies and career opportunities, a bachelor's degree in 4 years. You will take subjects like physiology, pharmacology, nutrition, pathology, microbiology and radiography.

Additionally, you will need to develop skills in tissue structure, clinical dental hygiene, gum diseases and using dental material. With a bachelor's degree, you will also take an array of extra humanities courses like sociology, psychology and speech in order to give you a well rounded education and develop your people skills to prepare you for working with patients.

Once your dental hygienist training is complete, you will need to pass state and national certification exams offered by the American Dental Association Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations, in order to become licensed to practice. You may also need to pass an additional legal exam.

Career Outlook

With the dental hygienist training you receive, you can expect to have good job opportunities as the field is predicted to increase faster than other professions through to 2012.

This is due to a rise in demand for oral health care, and because many hygienists are taking on the work of dentists. You can also expect to earn an hourly wage of between $17-40, depending on your education, experience and location of practice. It is a very rewarding, lucrative and challenging field to enter, so seek the right training to give yourself the best opportunities.

Click here to receive free information from dental schools

Dental Hygienist Online |