For more than a decade, Lauren McGuire dreamed of becoming a dental hygienist. Since she got her braces on in 2010, she was “obsessed with the idea of being a hygienist.”
Her dental career began in 2015 as a receptionist. She went on to become a dental assistant, which she did while attending dental hygiene school. Dental hygiene school, a challenge in and of itself for many, presented extra challenges for Lauren in the form of a 10-month-old baby girl and the COVID-19 quarantine. COVID switched her education to virtual, and then added new protocols after the quarantine ended.
Lauren graduated in 2021 and started working full-time in a general dental office in Kentucky. “I love it, and it feels so good to finally have accomplished my dream of more than a decade of becoming an RDH!” she says.
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Through all the challenges of dental hygiene school and now working full-time as a mother of two daughters, ages 4.5 years and 6 months, Lauren has learned that perfection is impossible, and she advocates for normalizing imperfection on her social media platforms.
“I’m constantly making mistakes and learning from them, and I think it’s important to be able to adapt and change by trial and error,” she says. “I’ve been trying to implement new things this year that I hadn’t been doing, such as taking blood pressure, bringing back extra PPE, taking a better medical history review, and more. I’ve been very candid about it so other people will know they aren’t alone if they haven’t been doing those things too, but that it isn’t too late to start trying to be better. I’ve been pretty open about my pregnancy/postpartum journey, being a working mom, and trying to balance dental hygiene and family life while avoiding/overcoming burnout.”
Lauren hopes to continue working clinically to gain experience and eventually would like to become a dental hygiene professor and/or clinical instructor. “Teaching has always been one of my main passions,” she says.
Lauren can be reached at [email protected] or on Instagram @flossinwithlauren.
Congratulations, Lauren McGuire, and welcome to the RDH Community Connections (RCC) dental hygiene influencer program!
Editor's note: This article appeared in the September 2023 print edition of RDH magazine. Dental hygienists in North America are eligible for a complimentary print subscription. Sign up here.
