BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Do you need your teeth cleaned? Good luck getting an appointment any time soon. A lack of dental hygienists means some practices are not taking new patients and some say the shortage is the worst they’ve ever seen.
Chelsea Wells loves making people smile, but finding help to do so is like pulling teeth. “It’s a stress that you don’t realize, it’s just kind of always there,” Wells said. “That’s not good continuity of care.”
Wells is the only full-time hygienist at the UVM Medical Center’s oral and dental health facility. She says a second full-time position has been open for two years. “Right now, it’s just about patient care. Right now, people aren’t getting… I think we’re here looking out nine or 10 months,” Wells said.
The UVMMC dental office is currently not taking any new patients because of the hygienist shortage. Oftentimes, the dentists themselves need to do cleanings. “We believe that we’re really at a crisis level at this point in delivering and delivering oral health care,” said Dr. Justin Hurlburt, a UVMMC dentist president of the Vermont Dental Society.
UVMMC’s office is known as a safety net facility for patients who have the highest need and often do not have private insurance or are on Medicaid. “We stopped taking new patients, which is which is scary for a safety net facility,” Hurlburt said. “A lot of dentists around town are doing hygiene now to try to keep up, to try to keep their practices going, and that takes away time from them being able to to do dentistry on their patients.”
The problem started during the pandemic. Hygienists either retired or left the profession and there were too few to fill the jobs. Wells says that’s because an oversaturation of hygienists a decade ago caused many new hygienists to leave the state. “There were a lot of people that in recent graduating classes, they didn’t stay here, they went elsewhere. So then, when all the people either retired or left the workforce, we didn’t have a lot of those new hygenists that we could pull from because they had moved elsewhere,” Wells said.
So how does the state bridge the gap? Vermont State University has the only dental hygiene school in the state. Usually, around 15 to 18 students graduate the program each year. Recently the program switched from two years to three years so they are graduating two classes of students. That means 34 students recently passed their clinical boards and are on their way to graduation, but that no students will graduate in the spring of 2025.
“We see these swings in the market every so often,” said VSU’s Heather Blair. “We were graduating hygienists that couldn’t find full time employment. They’d have to do two days in one practice, two days in another practice. And that was like that for a number of years. And now it’s shifted. It will shift again as we catch up.”
School officials say they don’t want to flood the market with hygienists again as it was pre-pandemic. However, dentists and hygienists we spoke to say they need help — stat. “We need to go to the grassroots and develop our own students here. And I don’t think we’re being successful at that right now,” Hurlburt said.
The VSU program is also demanding. Many hygienists say it’s extremely difficult, which is why some students drop out. And when a student quits — even early into the education — the school cannot fill that spot because a new student would be too far behind.
“It takes a lot of study hours, a lot of reinforcement. You do have the support from the faculty as well. They’re not lying when they say it’s difficult, but I mean, I’m not a Mensa genius. I’m still in the program and I’m slated to graduate in May,” said Rita Veve, a graduating student.
Students are ready to go straight into a job after the program. Most students have jobs before even graduating. Many dental offices are also offering generous hiring bonuses on top of wages that can be upwards of $55 per hour or around $115,000 a year. “Right now, it’s a great time to be a hygienist because you can find employment in almost whatever setting you’re looking for,” Blair said.
In the meantime, dentists and existing hygienists will try to fill the gap in oral care. “We want to help everybody. we would help everybody if we could, but we just can’t.,” Hurlburt said.
Senator Peter Welch secured $5.9 million for the dental hygiene school, which will increase the number of students in the program, but that’s still several years down the line.
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