Top 12 Dental Hygienist Skills to Put on Your Resume
Landing a role as a dental hygienist means showing sharp clinical judgment and calm, steady people skills. The blend matters. A focused resume that highlights the skills employers scan for—clearly, concretely—can lift you out of the stack and into an interview.
Dental Hygienist Skills
- Periodontal Care
- Radiography
- Patient Education
- Infection Control
- Dental Software (e.g., Dentrix)
- Scaling
- Root Planing
- Digital X-rays
- Oral Cancer Screening
- Sealant Application
- Fluoride Treatments
- Ultrasonic Instrumentation
1. Periodontal Care
Periodontal care spans prevention, detection, and non-surgical therapy for diseases of the supporting structures of the teeth. Think comprehensive charting, biofilm control, and targeted therapy aligned with the current staging and grading system for periodontitis.
Why It's Important
Healthy gums stabilize everything else. Effective periodontal care lowers the risk of tooth loss, reduces inflammation burden linked with systemic conditions, and improves comfort and function. It also helps patients understand their risk—smoking, diabetes, stress—so they can act early.
How to Improve Periodontal Care Skills
Chart with intention: Record probing depths, bleeding on probing, clinical attachment levels, mobility, furcations, and recession. Use the 2017 classification to stage and grade disease and to shape care plans.
Deliver evidence-based NSPT: Combine hand and ultrasonic instrumentation for thorough debridement. Prioritize root surface preservation over aggressive cementum removal.
Target risk factors: Coach on smoking cessation, diabetes control, stress, and home-care routines tailored to dexterity and anatomy (interdental brushes often outperform floss in larger embrasures).
Adjuncts when appropriate: Short-term chlorhexidine rinses, localized antimicrobials, and anti-inflammatory strategies where indicated.
Maintenance that fits the risk: Set 3–4 month periodontal maintenance intervals for moderate-to-high-risk patients; adjust based on response.
Measure outcomes: Re-evaluate sites with persistent bleeding or deep pockets and refine the plan—don’t just repeat the same playbook.
Keep learning: Hands-on courses in advanced instrumentation, local anesthesia, and perio-systemic links sharpen your edge.
How to Display Periodontal Care Skills on Your Resume
2. Radiography
Radiography for dental hygienists means capturing diagnostic images safely and consistently—periapicals, bitewings, panos, CBCT referrals when indicated—using sound technique and selection criteria.
Why It's Important
Radiographs reveal what the mirror can’t: interproximal caries, periapical changes, bone levels, pathology. Quality images reduce retakes, guide treatment, and protect patients through prudent exposure.
How to Improve Radiography Skills
Follow ALARA/ALADAIP principles: As low as reasonably achievable—as low as diagnostically acceptable, indication-oriented, and patient-specific. Take images only when they’re warranted.
Master positioning: Paralleling technique as your default; use holders that lock angulation. Keep a documented retake log to spot patterns and fix them.
Use dose-reduction tools: Rectangular collimation where feasible, proper filtration, and thyroid collars—especially for children and when exposures are near the thyroid.
Maintain equipment: Calibrate sensors, inspect cables, check timer accuracy, and run a basic QA program for image consistency.
Sharpen interpretation: Systematically review each image—crown, root, bone, lamina dura, PDL space, and soft tissues—to avoid misses.
How to Display Radiography Skills on Your Resume
3. Patient Education
Patient education turns confusion into action. You translate clinical findings into plain language, personalize home care, and build habits that stick.
Why It's Important
Informed patients brush and floss better, keep appointments, and say yes to care that makes sense to them. That means fewer emergencies, steadier health.
How to Improve Patient Education Skills
Use teach-back: Ask patients to show or explain techniques to confirm understanding without making them feel quizzed.
Motivational interviewing: Open-ended questions, reflective listening, and small goals beat lectures every time.
Make it visual and tactile: Disclosing solution, mirrors, models, quick sketches, before-and-after photos—with consent—land the point fast.
Customize: Adapt tools to anatomy and dexterity: interdental brushes, floss threaders, water flossers, end-tuft brushes.
Keep it short, repeatable: One or two actions per visit. Document what you coached so the next visit builds on it.
How to Display Patient Education Skills on Your Resume
4. Infection Control
Infection control is the safety backbone: standard and transmission-based precautions; clean instrument flow; safe water; surfaces that don’t carry yesterday into today.
Why It's Important
Patients and teams stay healthy when protocols are tight. Breaks in the chain—hand hygiene, sterilization, waterlines—invite trouble.
How to Improve Infection Control Skills
Hand hygiene without shortcuts: Wash or sanitize at the right moments. Nails short, no jewelry under gloves.
PPE that fits the task: Gloves, masks/respirators, eyewear/face shields, gowns. For aerosol-generating procedures, use high-volume evacuation and follow local respiratory protection requirements.
Instrument processing done right: Clean, package with indicators, sterilize with validated cycles, and verify with weekly biological monitoring. Track loads and recall when needed.
Environmental cleaning: Disinfect clinical contact surfaces between patients with approved products and proper contact times. Barrier when cleaning is impractical.
Dental unit waterlines: Shock, maintain, and regularly test to meet potable standards. Document results and corrective actions.
Sharps and single-use policy: Safe handling, puncture-resistant containers, and no reprocessing of single-use items—ever.
Training and audits: Annual refreshers, onboarding checklists, and periodic observations keep drift in check.
How to Display Infection Control Skills on Your Resume
5. Dental Software (e.g., Dentrix)
Dental software—Dentrix, Open Dental, Eaglesoft, Curve, and others—ties the practice together: scheduling, charting, perio records, eRx (where applicable), imaging, billing, and analytics.
Why It's Important
Competent software use speeds charting, reduces errors, surfaces due care, and supports clear communication with the rest of the team and with patients.
How to Improve Dental Software (e.g., Dentrix) Skills
Learn shortcuts and templates: Build custom clinical note templates, perio chart presets, and quick-pick codes that reflect how you actually work.
Keep data clean: Accurate medical histories, allergies, perio baselines, and risk notes drive better decisions and reminders.
Use interoperability: Link imaging, sensor software, and referral packets so information flows without re-entry.
Protect privacy: Role-based access, strong passwords, audit logs, and secure messaging keep you compliant and patients protected.
Run reports: Recalls due, perio maintenance adherence, unscheduled treatment—monitor and act.
Train and cross-train: Periodic refreshers reveal features you’ve been clicking past for years.
How to Display Dental Software (e.g., Dentrix) Skills on Your Resume
6. Scaling
Scaling removes plaque and calculus above and below the gumline. Done well, it’s precise and conservative, not a tug-of-war.
Why It's Important
Effective scaling reduces inflammation, halts disease progression, and sets the stage for tissue healing and easier home care.
How to Improve Scaling Skills
Ergonomics first: Neutral posture, loupes with proper declination angle, stable fulcrums, and good lighting preserve your hands and your back.
Sharp instruments: Routine sharpening (and timely replacement) makes strokes lighter, faster, and more complete.
Adaptation and stroke control: Use the correct blade-to-tooth angle, short controlled strokes, and the right tip or blade for the site.
Pair hand and ultrasonic: Debulk with ultrasonics; refine with hand instruments for root surface smoothness without over-instrumentation.
Manage comfort: Topical or local anesthesia as indicated; gentle tissue retraction; narration to reduce patient tension.
How to Display Scaling Skills on Your Resume
7. Root Planing
Root planing—more accurately, root surface debridement—smooths and detoxifies root surfaces after calculus removal, aiming for a biologically compatible surface without needless cementum loss.
Why It's Important
Clean, smooth root surfaces disrupt biofilm re-attachment and support re-establishment of a healthy junctional epithelium, improving pocket depths and bleeding scores.
How to Improve Root Planing Skills
Select the right instruments: Gracey and mini-bladed curettes, thin ultrasonic tips for deep, narrow pockets, and sharp edges that actually cut.
Use anesthesia wisely: Profound comfort unlocks thoroughness and patient cooperation.
Limit aggression: Feather-light terminal strokes; focus on deposits, not indiscriminate scraping.
Check your work: Tactilely reassess; use air and explorers to confirm root surface status before leaving the site.
Re-evaluate: 4–6 weeks post-therapy, measure response and plan site-specific retreatment or referral if needed.
How to Display Root Planing Skills on Your Resume
8. Digital X-rays
Digital radiography delivers fast images, dose efficiency, and enhancement tools that support sharper decisions.
Why It's Important
Immediate images reduce chair time, enable on-the-spot education, and lower exposure compared with legacy film when used correctly.
How to Improve Digital X-rays Skills
Protect sensors: Barrier sleeves every time, careful handling, and manufacturer-recommended disinfection prolong life and image quality.
Refine technique: Paralleling over bisecting whenever possible; use positioning devices that lock in the angle and height.
Dial in settings: Tailor kVp, mA, and exposure time to anatomy; save custom presets for consistency.
Enhance, don’t distort: Adjust contrast and sharpness judiciously; avoid overprocessing that hides caries or mimics bone loss.
Minimize dose: Rectangular collimation and thyroid protection as indicated; capture only what the case requires.
How to Display Digital X-rays Skills on Your Resume
9. Oral Cancer Screening
Oral cancer screening is a head-and-neck, intraoral, and extraoral exam that looks for mucosal changes, lumps, asymmetries, and symptom triggers. Adjunctive lights and dyes may help, but they never replace a thorough visual and tactile exam.
Why It's Important
Earlier detection improves outcomes. Hygienists spot subtle changes, track them, and prompt timely referral when something doesn’t look or feel right.
How to Improve Oral Cancer Screening Skills
Be systematic: Lips, labial mucosa, buccal mucosa, gingiva, tongue (dorsal, ventral, lateral), floor of mouth, hard/soft palate, oropharynx; palpate nodes and glands.
Know risk patterns: Tobacco and alcohol use, persistent ulcers, red/white patches, induration, non-healing trauma, and HPV-related changes.
Document clearly: Size, color, texture, location, onset, symptoms; add photos with consent and set review dates.
Refer without delay: Suspicious lesions that persist beyond two weeks—or high-risk red flags—go for further evaluation.
Educate and prevent: Counsel on risk reduction and encourage HPV vaccination through primary care providers when appropriate.
How to Display Oral Cancer Screening Skills on Your Resume
10. Sealant Application
Sealants protect pits and fissures on molars and premolars by blocking bacterial access to the grooves.
Why It's Important
They’re a proven caries-preventive shield—especially in newly erupted molars and in patients with deep fissures or higher risk.
How to Improve Sealant Application Skills
Prep the surface: Clean with a non-fluoridated paste or air abrasion if indicated; rinse and dry thoroughly.
Control moisture: Rubber dam, isolation systems, or careful cotton roll/garmer isolation. Saliva control drives retention.
Etch and bond per manufacturer: Respect etch times; consider a bonding agent under resin-based sealants to improve retention in challenging cases.
Place and cure: Flow into fissures, avoid pooling, light-cure fully, check margins, adjust occlusion if needed.
Choose materials wisely: Resin-based for dry fields; glass ionomer for partially erupted teeth or when moisture control is limited—repair/refresh rather than replace when possible.
Follow up: Reassess and repair at recall; a patched sealant still protects.
How to Display Sealant Application Skills on Your Resume
11. Fluoride Treatments
Professional topical fluoride strengthens enamel and root surfaces, cuts demineralization, and boosts remineralization where the mouth needs it most.
Why It's Important
From kids with new molars to adults with exposed roots or dry mouth, fluoride is a frontline defense against decay.
How to Improve Fluoride Treatments Skills
Match form to risk: 2.26% sodium fluoride varnish is preferred for high-risk children and adults; 1.23% APF gel or foam has limited indications. Avoid gels/foams in children under six.
Personalize frequency: High-risk patients benefit from 3–6 month applications; moderate risk may need less frequent care.
Consider SDF: 38% silver diamine fluoride can arrest active lesions, especially in root caries and when conventional care is delayed or declined.
Give clear aftercare: No hard, hot, or sticky foods for several hours; delay brushing for 4–6 hours after varnish unless product guidance says otherwise.
Pair with home care: Recommend prescription-strength fluoride toothpaste or rinses for high-risk patients.
How to Display Fluoride Treatments Skills on Your Resume
12. Ultrasonic Instrumentation
Ultrasonic scalers use high-frequency vibration and water lavage to disrupt biofilm and remove calculus efficiently, especially in deeper or furcation-involved areas.
Why It's Important
They reduce hand fatigue, improve access, and can be kinder to tissues when used correctly—all while flushing out debris and bacteria.
How to Improve Ultrasonic Instrumentation Skills
Perfect adaptation: Keep the lateral surface at a low angle (about 0–15 degrees), light pressure, overlapping strokes. Let the energy do the work.
Select appropriate tips: Standard tips for heavy calculus; slim and curved tips for deep pockets and furcations. Replace worn tips to maintain efficiency.
Control power and water: Lowest effective power; adequate coolant to prevent heat and to enhance lavage without drowning the field.
Manage aerosols: High-volume evacuation, pre-procedural rinses when appropriate, and PPE aligned with aerosol risk.
Screen for contraindications: For medically complex patients—older unshielded pacemakers, severe dysphagia—consider alternatives or consult.
How to Display Ultrasonic Instrumentation Skills on Your Resume
