Registered Dental Hygienist - Southwest - Adult Dental

Southwest Dental Center, 1530 W. Commerce Court, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America

Posted Friday, August 28, 2026 at 9:00 AM

JOB PURPOSE :
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.

Essential Job Functions:

• 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
• dentistry 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 but not limited to the following procedures:
• 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
• five life cycles:
• Prenatal, Pediatric,
• Adolescent,
• Educates patients on their unique oral health needs and desires using current best practice methods to encourage behavior change (e.g. 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, root planing, topical fluoride…