Prerequisites

Admission requirements vary according to the specific dental hygienist program in a dental hygienist school. A high school diploma and college entrance test scores are generally required to enter into dental hygienist schooling. For advanced dental hygienist education, as well as any dental hygienist job, high school courses such as health, biology, psychology, chemistry, mathematics and speech are quite valuable. About half of the existing dental hygienist programs prefer that individuals complete at least one year of college, in some cases two, before embarking on the journey toward a dental hygienist degree.

Once enrolled in a dental hygienist program, dental hygienist degree requirements include laboratory, clinical and classroom instruction in areas such as anatomy, physiology, chemistry, microbiology, pharmacology, nutrition, radiography, histology (tissue structure science), periodontology (gum disease science), pathology, dental materials, clinical dental hygiene, and social and behavioral sciences.

Aside from academic prerequisites, dental hygienists should naturally work well with others and have superior manual dexterity to wield dental instruments in and around a patient's mouth.