Skill Development and Successful Progression Through the Program

Educational Format for Development of Dental Hygiene Clinical Skills

Practice is essential to the development of competence in performing dental hygiene skills.
Skills are initially learned in situations and under circumstances that replicate those that the student will encounter in the delivery of actual patient care.
Students learn and practice basic instrumentation skills on manikins and progress to clinic partners, prior to patient care.
The dental hygiene faculty has the responsibility for assessing and evaluating students’ performance of dental hygiene skills and knowledge as they progress through the program.

Students as Partners
Throughout the two-year dental hygiene curriculum, students are periodically required to be “patients” to a student partner. Student partners practice dental hygiene procedures on each other, except for radiographic procedures.

Patient Recruitment
Students have specific patient cases that are required throughout the curriculum. The Harper College Dental Hygiene program provides students some patients through the clinical recall system and advertisements mechanisms. However, it is the student’s responsibility, not the program, to recruit enough patients to fulfill clinical requirement.