Dental hygiene in Ottawa... What are your thoughts?

My Significant Other(SO) is a dental hygienist and has been for about 7 years now. She went to La cite and did the 2 year program. I think it's 3 now. She did fine there but it really isn't easy. I'm not sure if it's the same anymore but she had to pass every class with 70% and if she failed a class, she would need to retake the whole semester over. Meaning every single class...

Then when you're "done" you have to pass a national exam. 3 hours and 300 question? Something pretty intense like this. She passed it the first time but a few of her friends didn't. You can retake it but in timed intervals(a month I think?).

When she was fresh out of college, she found work through a friend but applying in the dark just sending out resume's didn't work too well. Once her friend got her into this office she was there for about a year but was only covering a maternity leave so she lost her job there.

She got another full time position and worked there for around 3 years. Let me tell you that she came back home with horror stories of how she was treated by the dentist there who was the owner of the business. CHEAP, the dentist would cut corners everywhere, would be very rude and controlling and hire hygienist fresh out of college and pay them very little.

She's moved on to her third office now and things are better. Although she does have her share of issues there as well.

She gets paid a pretty well though, the range in her office goes from 28$-36$ an hour for hygienist.

No benefits though... her office doesn't offer any. Actually they all didn't offer any. Obviously she gets her Dental stuff free, they all get each other whenever they have gaps in their schedules to do cleanings, whitening and whatever else they want. She's never had to get any major work done but I'm sure she could get it free or at cost.

She find it's difficult though now that she's getting a little older. She's starting to suffer from back pains and joint pains here and there. So most hygienist work only 4 days a week. She tells me it's very demanding and of course there's a grossness factor but she doesn't really mind that anymore. You need to be good with people, social to some extent.

The office environment as a whole all seem to get along. Although I sort of find it like high school because whenever an incident happens involving something then it's the talk of the office for days... some cattiness involved etc...

It's very repetitive in certain ways as well but yet people are all different therefore it's something new at the same time. She's got great patients who bring her flowers and genuinely care for her and what's going on in her life. Then there are patients who don't want to talk, wants her to go as fast as possible and are just rude in general.

There's a hint of danger also, you're messing with people's health here in a sense and things could go wrong. She's insured for 2 million dollars for that reason but that being said, nothing (knock on wood) has ever happened with one of her patients. People faint when the dentists are performing procedures but that's about it.

She has paid sick days but it's difficult for her to use them... they book her a full day of around 6-8 people, at the very least and to reschedule them is very inconvenient. She only has two weeks vacation that she can take. They might give her more if she would ask but I don't think it would be paid? I'm not clear on this actually so I could be wrong, although I know it's hard for her to book vacation. She has to do this well in advance. She only works one night a week, and the rest it's 8-4 kinda schedule.

The Xmas parties are great though, they pay for a night at a nice hotel, free supper and gifts/bonuses.

Anyways, overall it's a good job in my opinion and it pays the bills for sure. There are some issues with the job that I've pointed out but they aren't major. It's not a job for everyone...

/r/ottawa Thread