Hygiene Highlights

6/2/2020

Spring/Summer 2020

 

Greetings from your President..

"I am truly honored and humbled to be representing the professional dental hygienists in our state this year. Thank you for entrusting me with this role.  I feel blessed to have the best team on the Executive Board. You won’t find a harder working, more approachable group of professionals.  We are dedicated to being your voice as we navigate this difficult time in our world and our profession.  We promise to stay abreast of best practices and listen to any and all of your concerns and suggestions.  Please stay connected with us this year and encourage your colleagues join us. Feel free to contact me at any time at [email protected].  There is strength is numbers, and we are better and so much stronger together."

Carissa Regnerus RDH, MA

SDDHA President 2020 - 2021

Greetings from your President Elect.. 

"It was a great 2019. This was my first year serving with SDDHA as legislative chair. It was a great experience for me and I learned a lot from this experience. I was recently chosen to be the President Elect for the 2020 - 2021 year. I feel very humbled to be offered this experience and hope to do my best to serve you all. As President Elect, one of my responsibilities is to serve as Membership Chair and promote and encourage new membership. In light of the current events this year, I am hopeful that we can increase our membership in South Dakota. The ADHA recently mentioned having 1,000 new members due to the impacts of COVID-19. Your membership matters now more than ever; we are stronger together. As your professional association, it is our job to advocate for you. Whether you are new or have been a member for years, thank you for your dedication to the profession. And thank you for allowing me to serve as your President Elect!"

Tasha Wendel RDH, MPH

SDDHA President Elect 2020 - 2021

Meet the rest of the 2020 - 2021 SDDHA Board 

Tia Meyer, Past President

Katie Williams, Vice President 

Abby Schiley, Treasurer

Hailey Bruggeman, Secretary

Krysta Novak, Legislative Chair

Maddy Hanson, Historian 

Angela Hall, Easter CE Coordinator 

The SDDHA Board would love to have YOU be apart of our team. We currently have one position vacant for the 2020 - 2021 term: Western CE Coordinator. We love providing continuing education across the entire state of South Dakota, and we need someone on the West side of the state to help plan continuing education courses for the SDDHA. If you are interested in helping lead the dental hygiene profession in South Dakota, please reach out to [email protected]

Congratulations to the SDDHA Hygienist of the Year, Tia Meyer! 

Tia S. Meyer is a Registered Dental Hygienist in South Dakota with over 12 years of dental experience. She began her career in dental by obtaining her dental assisting degree at Southeast Technical Institute in Sioux Falls, SD. As her passion began to grow, so did her desire to further herself in her career. She went on to complete her Bachelor's of Science in Dental Hygiene at the University of South Dakota. After working clinically as a hygienist for a couple years, she was offered the opportunity become the Dental Hygiene Coordinator for the Neighborhood Dental locations. Shortly after, she received another opportunity to become the Clinical Director for the companies nine locations. 

Tia has developed clinical protocols, training philosophies, and standard of care processes for these teams.  In addition, she has developed a continuing education program that each team participates in bi weekly as well as mostly recently a new CE platform that is open to dental professionals nationwide. She could not be more proud of the patient service specialists, dental assistants,  dental hygienists, managers, and doctors who are among the companies teams. They are the reason she does what she does each and everyday!

She has also had the opportunity to be a program educator at Southeast Technical College for the past couple years. She is the primary educator for the dental assisting apprenticeship program. The past two years she has worked with over 20 dedicated students to help them begin their careers as dental healthcare professionals! 

Tia has served on the SDDHA Executive Board for the past 2 years. She was nominated for and served in her role as President Elect from 2018-2019 and most recently served as the boards President from 2019-2020. She is currently preparing to take over the role as Past President for the 2020-2021 year. 

Tia resides with her family (Andrew, Kya (13), and Kemry (8)) in Tea, SD. Her continued perseverance and past accomplishments would not have been possible without their unending support! Another integral support system over the years has been her current employer. They welcomed her in having no dental experience and gave her every opportunity to grow while supporting her every step of the way! 

If you ask Tia for any professional advice she will tell you this: "Take everyday one day at time. Do everything you do with a good heart and never expect anything in return. Never forget those who were there to support you on your journey and most importantly always have faith and be thankful to wake up to another day filled with endless opportunity!"

Postponed April Radiology Continuing Education Course

We are sorry for the delay in rescheduling our Spring Radiology CE event. The SDDHA Board is working hard with the venue to get a rescheduled date to you as soon as possible. An email will be sent out once the event has been rescheduled. All registrants who previously registered are still registered for the event. If you wish to no longer be registered for the event, please email [email protected] and we would be happy to refund you. 

Register Now for the 2020 Annual Summer Virtual CE Event!

Annual Summer Virtual Event

We are pleased to offer a Summer Virtual CE event to take place of Annual Sessions 2020. The event will consist of five courses once a week starting June 25th - July 30th at 7:00 PM CST. The price is $30 for nonmembers and free for SDDHA members. The price is all inclusive for the five course. Below is the line up for our event. We hope to "see" you there!

June 25 - Tasha Wendel "Handling Medical Emergencies in the Dental Office"

July 9 - Dr. Miller "2020 Radiology Update"

July 16 - Carissa Regnerus and Chelsea Jorgensen "Medical Missions and the Dental Professional"

July 23 - Whitney Howerton "The Safe Dental Hygiene Appointment: Tips & Products to Break the Chain of Infection"

July 30 - Katie Williams "Periodontology Update: Putting New Guidelines to Practice"

Sign up now! 

SDDHA Semi-Annual in Chamberlain, SD 

The SDDHA Board is saddened to report that we will no longer be hosting the Semi-Annual held in Chamberlain, SD. With the new technology of today, we are able to provide you will more online courses. As a board, we believe this is the best decision for our association. Please reach out to us if you have any concerns. 

Job Postings

SDDHA is now offering a page on our website for job listings to be posted. We will also send out the job listing via email and on Facebook. You can see all job postings here. If you would like to submit a job posting, please email our Secretary Hailey Bruggeman at [email protected].

Joining SDDHA

Join SDDHA today to receive discounted continuing education courses, network with other hygienists across South Dakota, help make a difference across our state, and more. Join now!

With all the chaos happening in the world, we hope you and your families are safe and healthy. Please reach out to us if you have any questions, concerns, or ideas to help make SDDHA better!

Sincerely, 

The South Dakota Dental Hygienist Association