Diversity

I believe our profession is not very diverse for a couple reasons; as lame as it sounds our title "dental hygienist" sounds very girlie. The same problem goes along with nursing as the book mentions, many men do not want to be called "nurses" it does not sound manly enough.If you think of other professions such as dentist, doctors, teacher, scientist all have titles that can easily fit both genders. I feel age also plays a role as to why it is not diverse in that aspect; our job is very repetitive which can lead to carpal tunnel and boredom. Many older people are aware if this and choose other fields to go into. In my hygiene class we had one male who entered the program for job security. I believe he lasted 3 weeks and felt it was to hard and dropped out, as to how often this happens I am not sure? Another guess to why we lack diversity maybe because we do not put the word out enough in areas that we need to? The classroom setting in low socioeconomic areas at an early age? I believe children start to think about what they want to do when they go up at an early age. If we could go and introduce the profession not only to elementary schools but high schools I think would help increase the interest in men.
I know when I talk to patients about our profession they mention how great it is for women who want kids and the the flexibility that it offers. Which is great, but that does not do anything to attract the men. We need to advertise the benefits of our profession that would entail both genders. I know that the hygiene program at OSU does not encourage students who are looking into the dental program to take hygiene as there minor. I am not sure that I agree with that, I think we would be able to recruit more men and older people if they did choose the hygiene program. They may realize they like this part of dentistry and do not have to go half as long for the schooling.