Scott Leune: So I hear a lot of complaints from dentists about hygienists. I hear they want more and more money. They won't commit to a practice. I can't find any. They don't want to implement new things. They want more time for people. It's just not working. It's not working. It's too expensive, there's too much conflict. I can't find them. It's just not working. That's what I hear dentists say a lot. Well, I wanted to bring in someone that could talk to us about that and who I found was one of the most followed hygienists in the country. Brittany Glauz, she has on social media. You can find her at Brush with Brit. She has a big following. She was named one of the 32 most influential people by Incisal Ledge. She's a writer, she's a speaker, she's got her own podcast and I've asked her to join the dental CEO podcast so that we can start talking about these things that need to be discussed. They need to be said, let's talk about pay, let's talk about implementing new things. Let's talk about what the things are that a hygienist wants and needs, and let's talk about what the things are that dentists do that drive hygienists away. We need to have this conversation and we are in this episode with Brittany Glauz and myself, Scott Leune on the Dental CEO podcast.

Alright, so here we are with our next episode with Brittany Glauz. Now Brittany, of course, you just heard our intro, but could you please give for any of our listeners that don't know who you are or they haven't been following you, could you explain a little bit about who you are and what you're up to right now?

Brittany Glauz: Yeah, I'd love to. So thank you for having me on your podcast. I'm excited to be here. A brief description of me and kind of the things that I've done. I've been in dentistry for over 10 years. I was a dental assistant first and now a hygienist and I've been practicing for a little over four years. Within that amount of time I also created Brush with Britt, which is a lot of things, but it started out with social media and I have really become an advocate for dental hygienists and building the relationship between dentists and hygienists and just making sure that we are providing the standard of care to our patients. So I'm a writer, a speaker, podcast host, a social media content creator and just all sorts of things, just creating content around oral hygiene and preventative health.

Scott Leune: Yeah, what's interesting too is you're earlier on in your career right now, but you were already named by Incisal Edge as one of the 32 most influential people, which is a super awesome accomplishment and it just shows that people are noticing what you're saying, what you're doing and the amount of organic following you've been able to achieve in such short amount of time is remarkable. So congratulations on all of that.

Brittany Glauz: Thank you.

Scott Leune: Now for this episode, what I would love to do is I would love to talk to you. You are representing a lot of hygienists, we dentists or we CEOs in dentistry. We do our best to try to recruit great hygienists and to have a practice where they want to work, but also we try to deliver great patient care and we try to have profitable businesses and sometimes the juggling act of those three things, sometimes things go cross. And so I would love to ask you questions as you're the hygienist and if you could just give me the raw answer that I, the dental CEO need to hear that would be so valuable I think for our listeners is that okay if we do that right now,

Brittany Glauz: I will try my best and I can't represent every single hygienist opinion and take on things, but I'll give you my best perspective of things.

Scott Leune: Alright, so let's just start with one of them that's very sensitive to dentists today. The staff salaries in dental offices have gone up tremendously. And of course with hygienists it's the same thing as well. I remember in Texas hygienists were making 32 to $35 an hour. Now I've got people I coach in Austin outside of Austin and they're paying $75 an hour for hygienists. That's a huge difference. How do hygienists think about this? They come out of school, are they being told you have to ask so much or are they jumping from practice to practice kind of price shopping practices is pay kind of a core strategy of theirs right now. Could you explain to me kind of how hygienists think about this shift that's happened and what are their expectations?

Brittany Glauz: I think that there is such a range of hygienists searching for different things and when I initially came out of dental hygiene school it was 2020 and so this was kind of like right before things really started to raise for hygiene and it had been for some hygienists decades before they had ever seen a raise. So this was kind of like, oh wow, we're starting to get raises now. But one of the things that I try to stress the most to new hygienists and even experience hygienists is that understanding production and the numbers is so important. We can't just get out of dental hygiene school and demand this crazy hourly rate and not understand why or how we're worth that much. And in hygiene schools, they could only teach you so much in that short amount of time. And usually insurance and production is not one of the things that you're taught and sometimes you also shy away from it because we have this perception that learning those things is somehow unethical, which I can see it being that way if you're over diagnosing and pushing things that aren't needed. But once you escape that mindset and really start to focus on the numbers and understand the importance of communication with your patients, increasing case acceptance, diagnosing with the dentist you work with, that's when you really start to understand the value that you bring to a practice. And so I always stress to hygienists learn the numbers, learn the business and production side of dentistry, but there's not a lot of resources for us to even do that. So it does make it difficult to even start learning those things.

Scott Leune: You hit. One of the bullseye I try to also hit when I speak paying hygienists more is not actually the issue or the problem. The problem is when we are forced to pay more than the value a hygienist brings and that can kind of create this friction or this conflict. Just like another problem would be when a hygienist brings more value and they're not paid for it, that's the other side of the coin. And so if hygienists are making more and more money because that's where the market's going, that's a great thing for hygienists and to make that great for the practice, hygienists would therefore start bringing more and more value to the practice than what hygienists brought decades ago. And you touched on a couple things for value. You said production is one of 'em. We know that hygienists need to bring in three or three and a half times their pay and production per week for the math to work in many practices.

So if they're getting paid more but they're producing three or three and a half times that amount, everything is still working. The other thing you said on value is co-diagnosis with the doctor to help find what patients need and ultimately help patients say yes to the treatment they need. So there's a lot of wisdom in what you just said and I would love to just make sure our listeners hear that what we all want to end up with is a hygienist that's paid more with us than they could be paid anywhere else and they've brought in the value to justify it. What happens with that is a super happy hygienist that stays forever, I hope, and a super happy business that is proud of this arrangement and I think that's what we're all trying to achieve. So we need to pay more and we need to earn that pay. Do you agree with what I just

Brittany Glauz: Said? Yeah, definitely. And I think the other thing I would add to that is that there's surveys that have been done about the things that dental hygienists and assistants are looking for and one of the things that I don't think we talk about enough is work environment and bringing a positive work culture. That's one of the things that I've experienced a lot of negative places and that's ultimately why I left. I could be getting paid a high amount, but I'll leave a toxic work environment. I would rather be in a happy healthy dental home and get paid less than get paid more and be in a negative place.

Scott Leune: So let's compare and contrast happy versus toxic. So we've got a dental home, it has a dentist that probably is kind of owning the practice, maybe it's got maybe an office manager. It's got the front office team, it's got the dental assistants and the other hygienists and it's got the facility and the equipment and how much time we schedule and the technology we use or don't use. So can we start listing good versus bad, happy versus toxic? What might a hygienist say in general when I ask this question?

Brittany Glauz: I think the first thing is respect as a provider. Also appropriate appointment times and autonomy when deciding how much time is needed for something like a non-surgical periodontal therapy appointment case by case basis, not just this one size fits all for time-wise. That would be the first thing. And sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Scott Leune: Yeah, so if we have a dentist owner, what are some aspects that you would love to see when you think about a really good leader in a dentist and this dentist has helped create a happy home instead of a toxic work environment, what are some of those things that you might say about how that dentist is behaving or leading in the practice?

Brittany Glauz: Also just bringing that team culture and showing that we all work together as a hygienist. I go into sterilization and assistance help me with my instruments, I help them and I think it really starts with the leadership from the dentist and what they're bringing because ultimately we're going to follow whatever they're doing. So really bringing that teamwork.

Scott Leune: What about, are there certain technologies that you think make a big difference in how nice it is to work in a practice or certain kind of procedures that you're able to do?

Brittany Glauz: Oh yeah, definitely. So for my office, I'm very fortunate I get to practice with the airflow prophylaxis master, which is the best technology for teeth cleaning that's out there in my opinion. And that is something that I absolutely love being able to practice with because I feel I'm elevating the practice of care for patients and I'm really able to go over oral hygiene instructions with them by using disclosing solution. And I love being able to practice at the fullest ability of my scope. So definitely doctors that invest in technology, not only in restorative but also in hygiene is awesome.

Scott Leune: Alright, so I want to kind of connect a few dots. So let's imagine a world where a hygienist has a very competitive hourly wage but can also earn more on top of that if that hygienist is able to produce more. In addition to that, the hygienist is given an appropriate amount of time for procedures and for those cases where something's unusual about the case, we might need more time. The hygienist has the autonomy to change the appointment time for that patient even though it might hurt their production and maybe hurt their pay. It's the right thing to do for the patient and the hygienist gets to make that decision. And this hygienist works in an environment where they help everyone and everyone helps them. We have that team culture and when we look at the tools of the trade we have things like the airflow prophy master. We can take our time with other things we'll talk about later probably in this episode. But that environment, did I just describe that correctly? Does that sound like the happy home for the hygienist?

Brittany Glauz: In my opinion, yeah, that's where I'm

Scott Leune: At. Okay, awesome. So let's talk about some things that are maybe controversial. Like what if the owner dentist says, we're going to do assisted hygiene, you're going to run out of two columns with one assistant. And I would argue Scott here, I would argue there's a very wrong way and there's a very right way to do assisted

Brittany Glauz: Hygiene,

Scott Leune: Which is going to dramatically impact the ISTs experience. But what does a typical hygienist, so not you maybe, but a typical hygienist think when they hear of assisted hygiene,

Brittany Glauz: I think we're starting to understand more about the numbers and production. And so as soon as the hygienist hears that, then they're instantly thinking, okay, well if I could get paid X amount for a single column, then does that mean I'm going to be getting double that amount for a double column? But I think just the way that you said, there are situations where accelerated hygiene could work, but it has to be very structured and the whole team has to be involved in order to make that happen and to keep a hygienist in that position.

Scott Leune: Yeah, that's what I found as well. There are a handful of rules that must be followed. We must have enough time for the hygienist. We cannot share the hyn assistant with anyone else. An assisted hygienist gets their own dedicated assistant. We have to have all the instruments and the capron tips or so forth that the hygienist requires, and if we can align pay in a way that an assisted hygienist is able to earn a higher wage than if they were unassisted, then that becomes a very fair way of approaching the change of having to manage or juggle or hop between two rooms instead of the traditional way of one all while making sure patient care does not get a compromise. Right.

Okay. So when I'm looking at these trends, what I see is I see a lot of hygienists temping, so it's like they're not even committing, they're just kind of hopping from office to office. And on the positive side of temping, they get exposed to a lot of different practices and a lot of different leaders and types of dentistry and they maybe get to choose where they land. But I might also say there's some ISTs that don't have that intent. They're temping almost because they're not going to commit. They want complete control over whatever they do day to day and they don't have to perform as a temp. The benchmark of performance is way lower and it's kind of damaging the dentist owner in that more hygienists are not available to be permanently hired and because they remain temps, this might be something you would hear a dentist say is like you, I'm getting stuck now with temps that don't perform and they're not part of a culture and there's not any hygienist for me to go hire. There's temps, but no one wants to work full-time in one location. When you hear me describe that side of the coin, what do you think as a hygienist or what do you think personally,

Brittany Glauz: The first thing I think about an office that is constantly getting a temp and not able to keep a hygienist, is there something deeper going on in the office that is just not attracting hygienists? Maybe we need to look on the inside and figure out, okay, obviously there's hygienists out there, but why aren't they staying? Because usually there's a hygienist that is going to stay if like we talked about earlier, if the environment is attracting that. But then on the flip side, from a hygienist perspective, I see the issue of temping and how high it's gotten. And as a provider, I really enjoy seeing recare visits and seeing a patient for the second time. And experience wise, being a new grad, getting into temping, there are pros to it, but also if you are seeing a patient maybe for an SRP and you don't get to see them for their perio maintenance, how are you going to gain the experience of seeing what works with periodontal disease and what doesn't? So I don't know. I don't think that temping is great. I like it for a temporary solution, but not,

Scott Leune: Yeah, so you bring up a really good point. I hadn't thought of people or hygienists that are primarily just temping. They never get to really see the longevity of treatment benefit a patient. They never get to also develop this relationship with a patient. So they're doing dentistry without the patient relationship and without the clinical result. And that man that just seems like clocking in, clocking out and not really being dedicated a lot to dentistry and to the patient. It's a very interesting thing you said. Another thing you said was, well, maybe the issue is the practice, the environment. And what I see is I see a lot of practices. I might label, gosh, no one get mad at me, but they're just dumpy practices. It's just like outdated equipment, outdated decor, outdated furniture, outdated scheduling software. And I don't know, to opt into a dumpy work environment has got to be difficult for a hygienist. I would almost rather be kind of floating around and tipping until I can find the right working environment that even though the dumpy work environment practice is desperate to hire me. Is that something that you think is going on in the minds of hygienists that the way the facility feels and looks and how modern their equipment is impacting whether or not they even want to work there?

Brittany Glauz: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, you hear of hygienists going on a temp shift and something's not right and they're literally like, I'm never going back to that practice. It's definitely part of it. And going back to the experience that you gain with seeing recare visits, some of the temp hygienists go to the same office multiple times and they do gain that experience. But I just feel that if you're constantly going from office to office, then that's when it really becomes challenging to gain that. And I have gained a lot of experience with strategic scheduling by working in one office and I don't know how you get involved in production and strategic scheduling and all of those things if you're always a temp.

Scott Leune: Yeah. Okay. I've got another question for you, and I'm sorry I'm throwing these at you, but let's say I own a practice and it's a little bit dumpy. I mean we're not brand new. I mean we're not dirty and broken or anything, but we're not super modern or updated. We try our best to treat people well. We try our best to run a good practice and on the surface we're just normal. You're not impressed as a temp hygienist coming into my office, but I am impressed with you and I really want you to join us. I can't offer you a massive salary. We're normal. And so what I can offer you is within that range of normal, but I say to you, Brittany, I want you to work with us. We're good people. We try to do great dentistry, we do the best we can and we constantly try to improve.

But here's another reason why I think you should work for us. I want you and I to sit down and outline for the next two years all the continuing education you want to take, all the new procedures you want to perform such as facial aesthetics, procedures or laser procedures or perio procedures. And if I can make the budget work, I want to take you through that two year process of learning these new things in our practice. Alright, so what I just said to you, Brittany, has anyone ever sat down and said that to you, the hygienist? Has anyone done that for you?

Brittany Glauz: I can't say particularly. No,

Scott Leune: It

Brittany Glauz: Hasn't. No. So

Scott Leune: As you heard me say that, which is of course completely unexpected from you, would that make a big difference in hiring a hygienist? Am I correct to assume that that's a big deal for a hygienist or is that not very important to them?

Brittany Glauz: No, I mean in my perspective that sounds great. I would love to have open communication with the dentist I'm working with and build something that I'm happy with. I always tell new grads that too, that offices are capable of change and sometimes that change is going to be you. So if I was given that opportunity, I feel like that is such an awesome starting point to work with the dental office.

Scott Leune: So I got done interviewing someone earlier, Ryan Estes, who is an awesome interview and he talked about a development plan for employees. I think in dentistry we've kind of missed the boat on this. It's not just about getting through the day and cutting teeth and trying to survive by five o'clock and going home. And that's the same day for the rest of our career. I think there's a lot to be said about, Hey, we're going to come up with a plan of growth. We're going to all grow as people. We're going to accomplish clinical goals, we're going to accomplish financial goals for our family. And when I look at hygiene today, I see there's this new frontier in hygiene around facial aesthetics. So doing microderm abrasion, doing, of course we've seen fillers and Botox in industry, but there's a lot of procedures that are commonly done in a medical spa or in dermatology office or another physician's office that we can also do in dentistry.

And hygienists are almost ideal to do it. And financially speaking, a nurse practitioner in a medical spa can produce a million dollars a year in one column. And so if a hygienist has the ability to do some of those same procedures on a patient base that wants it and we're able to charge a reasonable amount for it, probably less than a med spa, I kind of see that as a really cool solution to enable the practice to pay hygienists a lot more and to enable the hygienist to learn something new and grow. Have you had any direct experience or known any hygienists yet that have kind of gone into the facial aesthetics world?

Brittany Glauz: Yes, I have. There is a hygienist who is in New Mexico I believe, and she was first a dental hygienist and then her dentist that she was working with wanted to get her what's it called, licensed to administer Botox. And so she actually went through nursing school in order to be able to administer that in practice. So now she does both in the dental office. And so I think it's a great opportunity for hygienist and the practice, but I also think that it can't take away from the proper assessment and diagnosis of periodontal disease, which I think a lot of offices miss that mark. So while there's this great opportunity for aesthetics, I think we really got to make sure that we get the perio on lock first and then open up that door to aesthetics and then you have both and then the office is even better for that.

Scott Leune: So what you're describing almost is as a hygienist, we have some core roles. We are someone leading preventative care, we're someone leading the diagnosis and the treatment of periodontal disease, and we're also assisting with the diagnosis, co-diagnosis with the doctor. And what we're now saying is, okay, we could also maybe add another role for some hygienists in some practices and say, Hey, we can go into the facial aesthetics side now for our listeners, some states allow hygienists to do this without having to go through nursing school and some don't. But every state, I believe, allows hygienists to do some of the facial aesthetics procedures that not Botox necessarily or fillers, but there's dozens of other procedures that could be done and med spas would give anything to have 2000 patients show up every six months. They would love that. And we already have patients getting this work done.

They would just get it done from us if they knew about it or if they could or patients have thought about it, if we just talked to 'em about it, they would, well, let's dive. You opened a can of worms with perio. Let's go into perio. I have this kind of thing I talk about where I'm not a believer and man, I am probably going to upset someone. I might upset you maybe I don't know. We'll see. But I don't believe that scaling alone is going to really do anything significant for a patient with periodontal disease. Well, first I use science to back that up. We've shown that after three months from when we did scaling, we don't have any more right back to where we used to be, which is why decades ago we had the recommendation we have to see patients every three months for payroll maintenance for the rest of their life.

And that is highly unrealistic for some patients that they're going to do that for the rest of their life. I use the analogy, I've got my middle kid, Colin, he loves to cook. He's 12 years old, loves to cook, but man does he make a mess when he cooks. And if I were to tell him to clean the kitchen and all he did was scrape the crusty stuff off the counter, that's not clean enough. We're going to still have problems if all we do when we have a gum infection that's eating away at the bone, scrape off the crusty stuff, that's probably not going to take away the infection. And so in a kitchen we'd get rid of the bacteria, but now in dentistry we can also attack the bacteria. It's scaling, but it's more than that. It's other types of things we can add to that. Do you have any experience or how might a hygienist look at going from decades of being told, Hey, we're going to do scaling and root planning to now hey, maybe we need to add a laser, maybe we need to add antibiotic therapy, maybe we need to add a mouthpiece they wear at night with medication in it or some of these other treatments. How do you think about those things?

Brittany Glauz: I think that myself and other hygienists are very interested to learn more about adjunct services that could be added on to a nonsurgical periodontal therapy and using, like I mentioned earlier, the airflow. It just really gives you that focus of biofilm. And so I think that that also really has changed my perspective on perio two and that it's not just about removing the hard calculus, but also controlling that biofilm and doing things like saliva testing. I've worked at offices where I can do that and I just feel like that is just an eyeopener and you're like, wow, this is even more better information for the patient to understand the disease. And it also helps you understand the diagnosis more as well.

Scott Leune: Yeah, that's really interesting. If we had any other part body part that was collecting scaly stuff and I had a bone infection that was going to make my body parts fall out, we'd be freaking out. How have we normalized scaly stuff in the mouth and a bone infection making our oral body parts fall out? That's pretty crazy. But we've normalized it. We've kind of downplayed it in our communication. We've taken away the urgency and we've almost, in many instances in dentistry, we've ignored it. We've kind of overlooked it. What you're describing is a very kind of holistic approach where if I combine what you said and what I said, we could do salivary testing, we're looking at biofilm, we can look at genetic markers, we can use things like lasers and mouthpieces and antibiotic therapy and so forth. And what we're trying to do is get reattachment and take away the infection just like in any other body part, we would do everything we could to get healing and take away the infection.

And that is when we actually change people's lives. Eventually they end up in a different spot in life. Those things. I would imagine, and correct me if I'm wrong, but if I were to say to my hygiene team, this is the direction I want to go in the next three years, I want us to become the very best we can be at the latest technology and hygiene, would hygienists look at that as a wonderful positive opportunity of learning, or would they look at it as like, I don't want to do this. I'm already tired of what I'm doing. It's going to cost the patients more money. You're just doing it. You want to make more money and not help the patient. I don't even believe in it. Where do hygienists fall in that spectrum, do you think?

Brittany Glauz: I definitely think there are some that might see it as a sales pitch, so to speak. But also I feel like given the right continuing education courses, and like you said earlier where you're like, okay, let's create this plan. We have this lined up, this is where we want to go. And once you start actually taking those classes and really learning more, and you're kind of going on this journey with the dentist you work with, I think hygienists would be way more open to it if they learn the right way. I think it's when it's kind of just thrown at you like, oh, we're going to start implementing this. And you haven't even really learned about it or seeing the results yourself that you're kind of like, okay, now I just feel like I'm selling stuff.

Scott Leune: Oh, you just described a normal dentist. They get an idea. They go just make a decision in their head, and then they just throw it at you. Hey, we're going to do this. And so what you described was maybe a proper way of implementing something new. So if I wanted to do this kind of treatment, I might say, team, let's go learn about it. And then let's together build an assessment. Every time we do an exam, we're going to assess the patient for these things. We're going to do the salivary testing, we're going to do this, that probing depths and so forth. And when we're triggered that there is a problem, we will automatically consider these solutions. It used to be if we had a five millimeter pocket or more, we do scaling, but now it's going to be much more thorough than that and we are going to deliver better care than that. Am I speaking the right language right now?

Brittany Glauz: Yes, absolutely.

Scott Leune: Okay. And so for dentists listening to this, if we can be passionate about this strategy of assessments, we could have a periodontal assessment, we could have a preventative assessment, we could have a facial aesthetic assessment. We could have a cosmetic dentistry assessment, an implant assessment, ortho assessment. Though the concept of an assessment really brings discipline into how we do an exam. So we get consistency. We consistently diagnose the perio that comes through our office. We consistently consider orthodontic therapy for patients. It's by systemizing the exam process into assessments that becomes predictable us and becomes also easily trained to our team that is expected to then be part of that. Alright, I want to switch gears here. We have a little bit of time left over. I want to switch gears. I want us to say all the bad things we've heard of or seen about dental CEOs, dentist owners.

Can we just hypothetically think of the worst dentists that we could possibly work for the worst dental CEO in a practice? Can we just for fun, list the things they do that make this so bad? What might be things? I'll start, I'll start. I'll say this. Worst dentist, the dental monster. CEO says, you only get 30 minutes for all your pro fees. And that's not enough time to be thorough. That's not enough time to educate, to deliver great care, but you only get 30 minutes. We're going to take turns here. What's one that you would say?

Brittany Glauz: I would say embarrasses me in front of the patient rather than having an educational conversation on the side when there's no patients there. Let's say you

Scott Leune: Ah, so you're worried there might be cavities and the doctor says, of course there's not cavities. And totally makes you feel like a fool. Yeah. Okay. How about I'll come up with another one. Never once to buy cavitron tips or any new instruments expects you to just do it all with sharpening old stuff, all your turn. That's

Brittany Glauz: Huge. Oh boy. You're going to have to flip this around and do it. Hygiene monster. So I would have to say, you already said that, not buying new instruments. I guess also just not implementing a periotherapy program, just ignoring perio and just rampant perio everywhere. That's just, I can't,

Scott Leune: Yeah. Yeah. And how about not only do we not implement perio, I myself, the CEO dentist have perio breath.

Brittany Glauz: Oh, that's got

Scott Leune: To be

Brittany Glauz: Frustrating. We have masks. Yeah.

Scott Leune: Yeah. What about, okay, so tell me something financially that this terrible dental CEO might do or say?

Brittany Glauz: As far as hygiene pay or,

Scott Leune: Yeah, whatever you want or Yeah, patient, whatever.

Brittany Glauz: I would say just too pushy on things that aren't necessary. I mean, I do think there's a healthy balance between under diagnosing and over diagnosing. So maybe just too much over diagnosing.

Scott Leune: So if we do an antibiotic therapy saying we got to do an every freaking site

Brittany Glauz: We see, and every single patient,

Scott Leune: Every single patient, which is the same dentist that magically always diagnoses some sort of bone graft for every extraction they do, even though that's not probably what's needed. So the reason why I had you do this, because these are speaking to the sensitivities and the worries that hygienists have. They're worried we're going to have a dentist want us to over-diagnose. We're worried dentists aren't going to give hygienists enough time or going to make hygienists feel like disrespected in front of a patient. So I think it's really important to say these things that hygienists are frustrated, that they have to use old stuff in old ways, and that we're not kind of developing the hygienist role up to modern standards. Did I say all that correctly?

Brittany Glauz: Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Leune: Yeah. And I think if you want to bash hygienists, yeah. In the bad

Brittany Glauz: Hygienists, I mean we have to do both. It's not fair if we just do dentists.

Scott Leune: The bad hygienist says if the patient's 10 minutes late reschedule. I don't have time to see them.

Brittany Glauz: Your turn. Okay. I'm worth $90 an hour and I don't even update periodontal charting or co-diagnoses.

Scott Leune: Oh, oh, I love it. Yeah, don't need to be para charging. Okay. I the bad hygienist I am not going to. And I don't believe in sealants. I'm not going to do 'em. Alright, your turn.

Brittany Glauz: Let's see what else. I am not interested in learning more about new technology or new advancements and you're just trying to upsell the patient for everything.

Scott Leune: Yeah, I am not going to do assisted hygiene. I'm sorry. I get it. I'm not going to do it. It's wrong. I'm not going to do it. Your turn. Come on with another one. Hold on. I got another one. I got another one. I'm just going to keep taking time off even though I'm out of time off. I'm just going to do it anyway. And I know there's nothing you can do about it because you can't find anyone to replace

Brittany Glauz: Me. Oh dang. Okay. That's bad.

Scott Leune: You got a last one? You got a last one for the

Brittany Glauz: List. I would say just not interested in continuing education. I don't really care to grow and yeah, I'm not bringing value to your practice.

Scott Leune: So we've described the hygienist that doesn't respect the practice's, policies, that is not wanting to do new things. They're pushing back against new things. They're not wanting to have any sort of development or accountability on their clinical care. And they're basically putting the practice in a situation where you're kind of stuck. You either have to fire this person and replace them, or you have to be totally damaged by them. And what I just said, dentist feel, dentist feel that last statement. I'm either stuck with the wrong person or I'm going to lose them, but not be able to find anyone else. I either have to have the wrong person or no person. That is how a lot of dentists feel. And I know if there's hygienists listening to this, I know that of a hygienist that maybe we just described, just like if there's dentists, there are dentists listening to this.

I know that when we describe the bad dentist, we describe people, let's just not accidentally have those same traits. So let's not accidentally have the bad dentist trait and the bad hygienist trait. As I, or finish this up here. I want to say that I think that dentists and hygienists, that relationship should be one of the very strongest relationships in the dental profession. But we've allowed things to kind of erode that away a bit. It should be that we're aligned clinically, we're aligned financially, we're aligned with patient care, we're aligned with work environment. It should be that we have that mutual respect and that we are truly trying to do what's right for the patient and for each other. That's how the jobs are set up. But due to a lack of leadership and due to a lack of accountability, we've kind of let that relationship crumble a little bit on the edges.

And I hope that this episode gets all of us thinking about that. Can we walk away from this episode and actually make a list of a couple things to do to help that relationship? Can we, as a hygienist, can you make a list of two or three things to just go to your dentist and that's going to help the relationship? And same thing, Dennis, can you just commit to two or three things that you've thought of from this episode that is definitely going to impact your hygienist in a positive way? Alright. So Brittany, before we head out here and I kind of wrap this up, is there any last kind of thing that you'd like to tell people? And remember, these are primarily dental entrepreneurs listening to this dentist, listening to this. And I know I've kind of put you in a tough seat at throwing these things your way and I really appreciate you being so flexible and open to kind of do this with me. But are there any last things you'd like to say to dentists that are listening to this?

Brittany Glauz: I would like to say to dentists, be a mentor to a hygienist because some of the most important things that I have learned was through partnering with a dentist and having those conversations and learning more, especially as a new grad, I was able to get under the wing of a periodontist. And that was when I really learned all the importance of having a successful periodontal therapy in a practice. And as a hygienist, I can bring more value to the practice when I feel appreciated and respected as a healthcare provider. And I'm able to implement all of those things like the prevention screenings and the assessments that we do. All of those things are what keeps myself happy. And I think I can speak for some other hygienists as well. And that's what keeps me in an office is having respect, autonomy, and being able to uphold the standard of care while also making sure the dental office is successful.

Scott Leune: Well, that last sentence I bet got a bunch of amens from hygienists. That was very well said. Now if anyone wants to connect with you or learn more about you, where would they go?

Brittany Glauz: They can find me on pretty much all social media platforms as brush with Brit. And also email is brush with brit@gmail.com and it's brush with Brit with two T's,

Scott Leune: Brush with Brit and two T's. Excellent brush with Britt. Well, Brittany, I cannot thank you enough for playing this game with me and coming out on the episode and giving us a very needed insight into the hygienist and the mindset of hygienists what's important to some hygienist. It it's something that we need to come back to constantly as dentists and some of us have taken too long to have this conversation with ourselves. What could we do to be more ideal as a practice and as a leader so that our hygienists are very happy and very successful and that of course the practice is doing well. So thank you so much for this. I hope that we cross paths again in the future and I would love to maybe do another episode sometime. Maybe we can dive into specific things like, okay, what is a very good peri protocol or a preventative protocol, or what does an assessment like that look like? I think that'd be valuable for a bunch of our listeners, so I might hit you up for that in the future. Absolutely. But again, thank you so much for your time. Again, brush with Britt on Instagram. Alright, so that brings us to the end of our episode here on the Dental CEO podcast. My name is Scott Leune and this was Brittany Gloss. Brittany, thank you so much and I'll see everyone on the next episode.