A comment in a Facebook group has been bothering Kelly Tanner, PhD, RDH, for a while now: the claim that dental hygiene is a dead-end career with nowhere to grow.
In this episode of The DrBicuspid.com Podcast, Tanner -- our hygiene editor -- sits down with Editor-in-Chief Kevin Henry to push back on that idea directly and to offer a practical framework for the second half of 2026.
Tanner asserts that hygiene school trains people for clinical competency. What happens after that, she says, is largely self-authored. She points to the American Dental Hygienists' Association's broader recognized roles for hygienists -- researcher, educator, entrepreneur, public health advocate -- as evidence that the career path expands far beyond the operatory. Her advice for anyone feeling stuck: Look at what you enjoy outside of dentistry and then find a way to lean into those strengths inside it.
She offers a concrete exercise for surfacing those strengths on a team. Ask each person what they think their colleagues would say their top three qualities are. The answers are often surprising.
Tanner relays that some team members may quietly enjoy certain tasks, such as ordering supplies or managing spreadsheets, without ever mentioning those preferences to their co-workers. On dental teams, an employee might gladly exchange one task they don't particularly enjoy with a co-worker for a task they do enjoy doing. Tanner did this exercise at her SOAR retreat in May and watched team members learn things about each other they never previously knew.
The second half of the conversation pivots to something more tactical: ensuring that a dental practice's messaging is aligned. Tanner argues that mismatched language across a team -- such as one provider calling an appointment a cleaning, while another provider refers to the same visit as a recare appointment -- creates confusion for patients who are increasingly arriving with questions pulled from social media and online research.
Tanner's suggested fix is holding a short team meeting built around a single question: What is every team member calling each procedure? She also shares a quick AI prompt for finding out what patients are searching for online before they ask it out loud in the chair.
Tanner's SOAR retreat for women in dentistry takes place in Carolina Beach, NC, in May 2027, with limited spots remaining. Her online courses and group coaching are available at nextleveldentalhygiene.com, and her monthly articles can be found here on DrBicuspid.com.
Listen to the full conversation below.
