NBDHE prep
What I like about temping, and what makes me say no
The higher rate isn't what makes me say yes. Dull instruments and terrible infection control are what make me say no.
Annie
RDH and creator of the nook & notes
Temping gets sold as the higher-hourly job, and the rate usually is better than staff pay. That's not the part that got me. The part that got me is that I decide how many days I work.
You pick the number
Three days one week. Five the next. None the week your sister gets married. You don't submit a request, you don't wait on an approval, you don't trade Fridays with someone. You just don't take the shift.
Hygiene has always been a flexible job right up until you accept it, and then it's the least flexible job out there.
The other thing nobody mentions: you get to audition offices without marrying one.
8
offices in three months tells you more about where you want to work than any interview ever will. If a place is great, you say yes to them again. If it's not so great, then you don't go back.
The instruments problem
Some offices hand you a cassette where every scaler has the shapness of a butter knife, one ultrasonic tip that's half worn away. You're expected to do a full-mouth debridement on a patient who hasn't been in since 2019, in fifty minutes, with instruments that can't cut anything. That's not a hard day. That's a terrible one.
We need good equipement to do our jobs properly and to protect ourselves from injury. This is my why!The infection control problem
The bigger one is infection control. Most offices are fine. Some are not, and you find out about ten minutes before your first patient. A handpiece someone wiped instead of sterilized. Cold sterile for just 2 hours, yuck!
You're the one whose name is in the chart. You can absolutely say you're not comfortable using or doing something, and the good offices will handle it without blinking. How they react tells you everything about whether you're coming back.
Pro tip
Write down if you would ever go back to an office and tell yourself why not
How to keep track of it all
I have used apps like Teero and Ondiem where you can see where you have worked and what your rate was. The problem was when I get temp shifts from word of mouth. I started a Google sheet to keep track but I hated the look and the overall getting to it. So I created a digital planner for hygienist who temp. I also needed a place to track my renewal dates and continuing education units so I created the pages for those too. I have always loved digital planning so why not use it for this! The planner has 11 tabs meant to help you with your work life as a temp hygienist. If you think this is something that could help you, I'll leave the link below.
every office & every hour
The Temp Hygienist Planner
I keep a running list of every office I've worked, the rate, the software they use, and one honest line about whether I'd go back. It's the first page I built into the planner, because by March you will not remember which office had the good chairs and which one had the butter knives.
See it on Etsy
