Attn: Hygiene College and Associations

Dear College of  Dental Hygienists of Ontario (CDHO), Canadian Dental Hygienists' Association (CDHA), Ontario Dental Hygienists' Association (ODHA)  Executive, Directors and Advisors and Members.

I am writing on behalf of many Ontario dentists and dental specialists. Dentists and hygienists have been working synergistically together for decades. We value our hygienists, their skill, their compassion and their work ethic. Many of us could not have built profitable practices without the help of our hygienists. 

However, over the years, the CDHO, CDHA and ODHA have increasingly encouraged an adversarial relationship with dentist employers.   

During the forced closure of dental practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic, hygienists should be unequivocally supporting their dentists. 

On March 31, early in the pandemic office closures, CDHA sent emails to their members encouraging them to pressure dentists to rehire them and apply for CEWS. This at a time when the subsidy was not even clearly delineated by the government!  Most dental offices were closed with no income coming in. How can a dentist producing zero income pay a staff wage? One cannot bleed a stone!  The aggression and entitlement in CDHA’s email to their members created an adversarial relationship between employee and employer before the dentist could even understand the nuances of this subsidy.

The multiple CDHO Return to Work Guidelines and the May 29 webinar again were independent of the RCDSO guideline. Dentists and hygienists work together intimately; we expect some consideration for our governing body. Releasing your guidelines to hygienists who are, in majority, employed by dentists is disrespectful and dismissive of your members’ employers.

The demands made by the CDHO Return to Work Guidelines are impossible in the global climate of PPE shortages and financial stressors.  

The CDHO Guidelines require hygienists to have a new N95 masks for every single patient and N95 masks for any accompanying person in the operatory. Many dental offices graciously donated their PPE at the start of the pandemic to hospitals only to now suffer through a shortage of their own. Hospital physicians and nurses are using ONE N95 mask PER DAY! To demand no re-use of N95 masks when CDC and the like have advocated for reuse in the case of pandemics is out of touch with reality.  Asking the dental community to discard between 10-50 N95 masks a day when emergency doctors intubating COVID positive patients around the world are reusing the same mask for a week is very entitled. The cost of PPE has multiplied 10-fold. An N95 mask pre-COVID was approximately $1-2. They now cost $10-15 - if you can even get your hands on any. Gowns are elusive yet you demand them. CDHO also demands a three-hour fallow time for operatories, enclosed ceiling to wall operatories, negative pressure laundry facilities, plexiglass reception areas. These demands are not evidence based. 

You are making demands that prevent your members from returning to work. Further, the ODHA has encouraged members that do not “feel safe” to report their employer to Public Health and the RCDSO. Why are you determined to create problems instead of encouraging cooperation?

I implore all hygiene associations and the CDHO to stop making exorbitant demands on the dentists that employ your hygienists. All dentists want their teams to come back to work and we want everyone to be safe. Please stop working against us. Please stop stressing your members out with demands that are unreasonable and against our own dental guidelines. Stop trying to jump the gun and inform your members of issues that have not even materialized yet.

You are pitting hygienists against dentists. Hygienists want to come back to work but are afraid to because their College is insisting on following guidelines that are not supported by the RCDSO guidelines or evidence. You will put your hygienists out of work...unless this is your intention to push your members to open their own offices. Have you ever owned a practice? And if you do, would you be able to afford to operate in the guidelines your College has set out?

Hygienists are an integral part of a strong dental team. We wish to continue this symbiotic relationship however, we are capable of scaling and root planning and implementing periodontal therapy programs. Do not make your members’ professions obsolete. Let us work together instead of against each other.

Yours sincerely,

Phu-My Gep, B.SC., D.D.S., M.Sc. (Ped. Dent.)

Toronto, ON