Dental Hygienists Make Sports Guards Too!

In 2016, a group of my classmates pitched an idea to the faculty to start a health promotion initiative where the UBC dental hygiene students would make sports guards at a discounted rate for the UBC Thunderbird athletes. This project came to fruition the following year and it has since been expanded to reach members of the public as well. My friend had a sports guard fabricated at one of these clinics, but due to scheduling issues he wasn’t able to get it fitted so I offered to trim and finish it for him. I had a really good time doing this! Being a clinician in private practice, it’s easy to get into a routine of mundane periodontal debridement, so it was nice to exercise a different skills set. This experience also reminded me that I should be advocating more for sports guards and actively asking clients if they participate in high impact sports. Prevention is such an important aspect of dental hygiene and this was a nice reminder that I need to be doing my part in health promotion and advocacy. I’m excited to add sports guard fabrication to my regular clinical activities in the future.

#healthpromotion #advocacy