Registered Dental Hygienist - Center of Oppurtunity - Adult Dental

Registered Dental Hygienist
- Center of Opportunity
- Adult Dental

El Rio Community Health Center, 450 W Paseo Redondo, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America

Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2026 at 9:00 AM

To provide dental hygiene care and education to patients in traditional and non-traditional settings in the dental clinics, integrated medical sites, or community outreach settings.

• Promotes the patients’ dental health by delivering comprehensive dental hygiene services in a quality-oriented and cost effective manner.
• Supports the capacity of the dentists to deliver patient care by acting as a dental auxiliary in providing expanded function services to the patients.
• Supports the dentist and dental team members and works in a professional, cooperative and congenial manner with the entire dental staff (i.e., dentist, hygienists, residents, students, dental assistants, and dental receptionists).
• Develops strong working relationships with medical providers that enhance communication regarding the oral health needs of their patients.
• Collaborates with a broad spectrum of health professionals while working across traditional boundaries to achieve success.
• Develops rapport with patients, family, staff members and management.
• Supervises and participates in the training of dental hygiene students and coronal polishing certified dental assistants.
• Works clinical sessions and/or supervises dental hygiene students during clinical sessions as assigned by the Dental Director, and is prepared to begin work during these clinical sessions in a punctual manner.
• Provides comprehensive dental hygiene services in a traditional dental team environment at the direction of the team dentist.
• Ability to deliver dental hygiene care which is considered reasonable, prudent, and within the abilities of a dental hygienist; to include, but not limited to, the following procedures:
• Radiology:
  Takes high quality, diagnostic images as prescribed by the dentist.
• Preventive:
  Performs dental prophylaxis, the application of topical fluorides including fluoride varnish, and the application of pit and fissure sealants.
• Patient
  
  Education:
  
  Instructs patients in all phases of oral hygiene, home care technique, nutritional counseling and tobacco cessation utilizing motivational interviewing techniques.
• Periodontics:
  Performs periodontal scaling/root planning, conservative periodontal therapy (i.e., placement of controlled-release chemotherapeutic agents), and periodontal maintenance procedures.
• Adjunctive:
  Administers local anesthesia, nitrous oxide analgesia under supervision of a dentist and all other services allowed within the scope of the AZ Dental Practice Act regarding regulation of dental hygienists.
• Provides ancillary services in support of the Dentist’s practice to include:
  • Diagnostic data collection for comprehensive examination appointments.
  • Triage of emergency patients.
  • Local anesthetic injections for the dentists’ patients.
  • Suture removal and post‑op care including dressing change.
  • Polishing of amalgam restorations.
  • Taking and recording vitals on patients.
  • Performs and documents medication reconciliation.
  • Tooth Charting and treatment planning for the dental team as needed.
  • Periodontal probing and charting.
• Provides dental hygiene care in non‑traditional settings such as medical integrated clinics and outreach events.
• Delivers high quality dental hygiene care to a diverse patient population according to the following life cycles:
  Prenatal, Pediatric, Adolescent (etc.).
• Educates patients on their unique oral health needs and desires using current best practice methods to encourage behavior change (motivational interviewing). This may include: nutritional counseling for control of dental disease, tobacco counseling for the control and prevention of oral disease, helps the patient to identify and select self‑management goals, assists special needs patients with complex medical conditions.
• Employs the SOAP method of recording patient treatment in the electronic dental record.
• Performs all hygiene clinical procedures to include prophylaxis for adults and children, periodontal maintenance, periodontal scaling,…