# Dental Hygienists

> Administer oral hygiene care to patients. Assess patient oral hygiene problems or needs and maintain health records. Advise patients on oral health maintenance and disease prevention. May provide advanced care such as providing fluoride treatment or administering topical anesthesia.

- **SOC code:** 29-1292.00
- **Canonical URL:** https://singulariki.com/roles/role-29-1292-00
- **Also known as:** Dental Hygienist, Hygienist, Licensed Dental Hygienist, Registered Dental Hygienist (RDH), Pediatric Dental Hygienist, Dental Nurse, Dental Treatment Coordinator, Oral Hygienist
- **Frame:** "AI exposure" means task overlap (how codifiable the work is), not jobs lost or a forecast. Every figure below is traced to a named public dataset.

## What this work is

**Core tasks** (O*NET):
- Record and review patient medical histories.
- Feel and visually examine gums for sores and signs of disease.
- Clean calcareous deposits, accretions, and stains from teeth and beneath margins of gums, using dental instruments.
- Examine gums, using probes, to locate periodontal recessed gums and signs of gum disease.
- Provide clinical services or health education to improve and maintain the oral health of patients or the general public.
- Chart conditions of decay and disease for diagnosis and treatment by dentist.
- Expose and develop x-ray film.
- Attend continuing education courses to maintain or update skills.
- Maintain dental equipment and sharpen and sterilize dental instruments.
- Apply fluorides or other cavity preventing agents to arrest dental decay.
- Maintain patient recall system.
- Feel lymph nodes under patient's chin to detect swelling or tenderness that could indicate presence of oral cancer.

## Skills, tools, capabilities

**Knowledge, skills & abilities** (O*NET, highest importance first):
- Medicine and Dentistry _(knowledge)_
- Customer and Personal Service _(knowledge)_
- Problem Sensitivity _(ability)_
- Arm-Hand Steadiness _(ability)_
- Finger Dexterity _(ability)_
- Near Vision _(ability)_
- Active Listening _(essential_skill)_
- Oral Comprehension _(ability)_
- Oral Expression _(ability)_
- Speaking _(essential_skill)_
- Critical Thinking _(essential_skill)_
- Manual Dexterity _(ability)_

**Skills in demand:**
- Finger Dexterity _(Common Skill)_
- Active Listening _(Common Skill)_
- Critical Thinking _(Common Skill)_
- Speech Recognition _(Specialized Skill)_
- Writing _(Common Skill)_
- Social Perceptiveness _(Common Skill)_
- Inductive Reasoning _(Common Skill)_
- Time Management _(Common Skill)_
- Reading Comprehension _(Common Skill)_
- Microsoft Word _(Common Skill)_
- Microsoft Excel _(Common Skill)_
- Instructing _(Specialized Skill)_

**Tools & technology:**
- Henry Schein Dentrix _(hot technology, in demand)_
- Microsoft Excel _(hot technology)_
- Microsoft Office software _(hot technology)_
- Microsoft Word _(hot technology)_
- Dental billing software
- Dental charting software
- Dental clinical records software
- Dental digital radiology software
- Dental imaging software
- Dental intra-oral imaging software
- Dental office management software
- Email software

## AI exposure & outlook

- **AI task-overlap index:** 21st percentile (Low) across all occupations — composite of current-era exposure studies (ai-exposure-index-v1).
- **LLM task exposure, γ (OpenAI / Eloundou):** 33rd percentile (Low) — source: eloundou_gamma.
- **AI assistant applicability (Microsoft):** 13th percentile (Low) — source: microsoft_applicability.
- **Projected employment (BLS 2024–34):** 7.0% growth (Growing fast); 15.3k annual openings; 221.6k → 237.2k jobs.
- **Pay & employment (BLS OEWS, May 2024):** median $94,260; 219,070 employed.

## Sources

- **O*NET** (30.3) — U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS)** (May 2024) — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS Employment Projections** (2024–2034) — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **Anthropic Economic Index** (v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27)) — Anthropic. https://www.anthropic.com/economic-index
- **Microsoft “Working with AI”** (working-with-ai) — Microsoft Research. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/
- **“GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.)** (arXiv 2303.10130) — OpenAI / academic. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130

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_Generated from Singulariki's joined dataset; data snapshot 2026-06-02T21:00:32.945303+00:00. https://singulariki.com/roles/role-29-1292-00_