Veronica Ahue, RDH

To all the fellow hygienists out there and our dental professionals we know the daily struggles of just trying to amount to what our patients and bosses expect of us, but why not be more. Since covid I found myself slowly getting out of a toxic job and slowly moving into temping jobs and then finally landing a very wonderful full time office, which is hard to say for most. There is always something though that I would expect to challenge me as I grow in my profession, respectfully to be a better me. Now what I was not expecting was learning a whole new language, dynamic, and slight culture shock, being the hard part of my job. I found myself in this job, with great doctors and staff but 98% of Japanese speaking patients that were also shocked to see me being the one to take care of them, a mixed young lady with absolutely no Japanese background let alone knowing any words in Japanese.

As a hygienist I am fully committed to educating, working long hours, being a team player not only starting from the back office but also always helping the front office and more. Once I started at this new office though, it started to make me feel so inferior in an occupation and subject that I loved so dearly all because I could not communicate properly with my patients. For a few months I started to rethink my position and was honestly so close to leaving until I realized that this was the dumbest reason to give up. Not only did I push myself every day to learn a new word in Japanese, speed up to a few years now and I have now been working on a quick guide to soon be published to not only help myself but others in the dental field that want to break that barrier of communication to better assist their patients. I have built a rapport with my patients now and they truly appreciate just the effort that I put in to be able to communicate to them and they as well wanting to know the meanings/ words in English to better understand their health needs. As a soon to be new mom I thought about how excited I would be to tell my child one day that as hard as something may be, it is how you overcome it. We can all take the easy way out but as hygienists we don’t want to be the under dogs. Most of us all work really hard to be seen and heard because we are in such a grey zone of occupation.

I strive to be so much more for myself and my patients because they always should have access to care that they deserve and why not be us to give it to them. Not one patient is the same and they should always be treated as their own individual self with their own needs. I will always go out of my way to learn about new products, new treatments, and as I have done now, learning new words in their language just to make sure they feel comfortable learning about their health while in my chair. As I get ready to finish my quick guide book to get published I want to push myself to get more into TMJ treatment and learn more on Curodont to provide that knowledge chairside. Our world is always evolving and I plan to evolve with it to provide the best care that I can give to my patients.