Dental Hygienists: Educational Program Prerequisites

Admission requirements for a dental hygienist school range depending on the particular dental hygienist program. A high school diploma and college entrance test scores are typically required for matriculation in dental hygienist schooling. For embarking on advanced dental hygienist education, as for any future dental hygienist job, high school courses such as health, biology, psychology, chemistry, mathematics and speech are extremely useful.

Approximately half of the existing dental hygienists programs prefer applicants to have completed at least one year of college, sometimes two, before entering into the path toward a dental hygienist degree.

Once a student has enrolled in a dental hygienist program, his or her dental hygienist degree requirements include laboratory, clinical and classroom instruction in subjects such as anatomy, physiology, chemistry, microbiology, pharmacology, nutrition, radiography, histology (tissue structure science), periodontology (gum disease science), pathology, dental materials, clinical dental hygiene, and social and behavioral sciences.

Outside of academic prerequisites, dental hygienists must be able to easily interact with others and have heightened manual dexterity to manipulate dental instruments in and around a patient's oral cavity.