President Address: 2012
I would like to welcome you to an exciting new year for our students, educators and dental hygienists across our nation. We’ve come a long way since 1915, the year that marks the first graduating class of dental hygienists. Our modern day sterilization rooms provide many of us with digital equipment and state of the art options. In 1915, the sterilization room consisted of a pot of boiling water and extracted teeth were placed in modeling clay so that the student hygienist had something to practice on. We have come a long way, but we have an even longer road ahead of us. The focus this year at our Annual Session was access to care. Access to care can only improve as we improve our profession.
“Support” is the key word. We must gain support from each other, our professional organization and our law makers in order for us to move forward. We are no longer the auxiliary who polishes teeth and shows the patient how to use a toothbrush. We are the preventive oral health specialist who is capable of determining what chemotherapeutic works best, what form of treatment can bring the patient to better oral health and having the ability to recognize a disease process whether oral or physical. I welcome the opportunity, not to walk in front of you, nor to walk behind you, but to walk beside you to move us forward. I am hoping that ten years from now when the president’s letter is written the changes will be significant from 2012 to 2022.
Donna Lauricella, RDH
President