Last November, Dr. Logan French took over a dental practice in Jackson Square, rebranding it as JP Dental.
He’s hired receptionists and assistants, but is having enormous recruitment trouble in one crucial category.
“We’ve been trying to hire hygienists since Day One,” French said. “We would like two full-time hygienists and we can’t even get one right now.”
Dr. French is hardly alone.
An American Dental Association survey done mid-pandemic found 40 percent of dental practices in the U.S. in the market for dental hygienists. Ninety percent of them reported it was very or extremely challenging to find them.
To say the least, it didn’t used to be that way.
Amanda Berthiaume became a dental hygienist in 2015. Now president of the Massachusetts Dental Hygienists Association, she remembers a much different job market nine years ago.
“We were actually over-saturated as a profession in Massachusetts,” she said. “A dental hygienist could not find a full-time position.”
And then came Covid.