It’s now up to the Kansas Board of Regents to decide whether Flint Hills Technical College will have a dental hygienist program.
On Monday, the college board of trustees voted to request the program. If granted, the college would be the fifth school in the state to have such a program and the only one to train both dental hygienists and dental assistants.
In 2006, Kansas had 1,477 active hygienists. It isn’t enough. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, demand for both hygienists and assistants is expected to grow by 36 percent by the end of the decade.
“In Colorado, we had one of the largest dental hygiene programs in the nation,” said technical college President Dean Hollenbeck, whose last job was heading up Colorado Northwestern Community College’s campus in Craig. “We had 80 students and we could have easily taken more.”
A recent survey of Kansas dentists found that people with both assisting and hygienist skills were needed, said Monica Jones, the head of the college’s dental assisting program.
“They want one person with both skills,” Jones said. “Rural Kansas dentists can recruit one person, but often not two.”
Adding to the difficulty, a number of hygienists don’t stay in the profession. According to Jones, many leave after five to seven years.
Assistants serve as an extra pair of hands for the dentist, doing basic tasks such as cleaning instruments, taking X-rays and helping build dentures. Hygienists are trained to do more intensive tasks such as deep cleaning, injections and examining teeth.
According to the Health Careers Center in Mississippi, a dental assistant’s salary can range from $18,200 to $31,000. A hygienist’s salary ranges from $39,800 to $68,200. The Web site www.healthresource.org lists the national median salary for assistants at $25,979 and for hygienists at $51,334.
Amy Bradford graduated from the Flint Hills dental assisting program and then trained as a hygienist at Wichita State University after her boss encouraged her to further her education. She now works as a hygienist for Emporia dentist Marlin Flanagin.
“It would have been helpful (to have the hygiene program here) because I wouldn’t have had to move from a small town like Lebo to a big city like Wichita,” Bradford said. “It would have been nice for that program to be available to me.”
She still finds the profession extremely satisfying.
“The most rewarding for me is seeing a patient who doesn’t have the best dental care habits change their techniques by our careful dental care encouragement and education,” Bradford said.
There will be a 45-day period for other schools and programs to make comments before the Kansas Board of Regents takes up the request. If approved, the hygienist program will be submitted to the American Dental Association so that accreditation can be pursued. If everything goes right, the new program could be in place by fall 2008.
Students in the hygienist program would have to have passed the dental assisting program first with at least a “C” in all course work. A student could complete both programs in about three years; two semesters to complete the assistant program and another 3-4 semesters to complete the hygienist program.
The hygienist program would accept a dozen students to start with and meet in the evenings.
The program is projected to cost the college about $179,000 but is also expected to bring in about $212,000 in revenue.
Leading the way
The Legislature may be asked this year to create a governing board for technical colleges and schools.
The draft bill is still being discussed by the Kansas Technical School and Vocational School Commission, a study group created by the Legislature. If adopted, it would create a nine-member governing board consisting of three members of the Kansas Board of Regents, one state school board member and five members of the general public. The board would also hire an executive director.
A number of the details are still up in the air, Hollenbeck said, not least of which is how to pay for it.
“Nothing is going to happen unless the Legislature allocates funds to it,” he said. “That’s going to be the battle.”
If created, the board would be able to coordinate planning for technical education, be a voice for the schools at the state level and make recommendations on programs to the board of regents.
One byproduct, Hollenbeck said, would probably be a standardized curriculum. He added that that might not be a bad thing in terms of efficiency. In nursing, he said, he could think of two other schools that trained the same sort of skills as Flint Hills but required more hours to do it.
“You say that to business and industry people and they’ll ask ‘How’d that happen?’” Hollenbeck said. “Businesses don’t run that way.”
In other action:
• The trustees approved a $25,309 bid from Stutler Technologies to put in a new telephone system. A power surge crashed the current system, which is more than 15 years old. Insurance money will cover the bid.
• Training for the college’s Interest-Based Bargaining sessions will begin Feb. 13. IBB is a method of contract negotiation that emphasizes cooperation instead of confrontation.
• Expenses for the college have run slightly ahead of projections, but the school still finished December with an ending cash balance of $1,053,726. That’s nearly $190,000 ahead of the same time in 2005.
• A total of 392 students have enrolled for the spring semester, one less than last spring. But the “full-time equivalent” enrollment used to determine funding has gone up, mostly due to an increase in the power plant program.