One of the things I love most about dental hygiene is that no two career paths have to look the same. Some hygienists stay chairside and become exceptional clinical providers. Others move into education, public health, writing, advocacy, sales, research, entrepreneurship, consulting, or leadership. Some, like Kristine Gatdula, RDH, BS, Myofunctional Therapist, build careers that remind us just how expansive this profession can be when we stop trying to squeeze dental hygiene into one narrow definition.
Gatdula’s work sits at the intersection of dental hygiene, airway health, myofunctional therapy, breathwork, and prevention-based care. She is practicing in the space many of us have been talking about for years, where oral health is understood as part of whole-person health.
That connection became clear to Gatdula early in dental hygiene school. While working with an oncology department to provide oral health education for nurses, she and her partner discussed xerostomia, hygiene, and infection prevention. What stayed with her most was the way the nurses responded and the questions they asked.
“For the first time, I saw oral health being treated not as something separate, but as an essential part of healthcare,” Gatdula shared.
That moment planted a seed. After graduation, private practice did not always reflect that same integrated perspective. Gatdula described feeling, at times, more like a “mouth janitor” than a healthcare provider. It is a phrase many hygienists will understand immediately, even if we wish we did not.
Her perspective shifted when she moved into school-based health, public health, and integrated care settings. Working alongside medical and behavioral health teams reinforced what now shapes her entire approach: healthcare is incomplete when we separate the mouth from the body, or the body from the mind.
That is a powerful statement, and it is also a challenge to our profession.
For years, dental hygienists have been educated in prevention, risk assessment, behavior change, inflammation, disease progression, and patient education. Yet the systems we work in often reduce our role to production, time blocks, and procedures. Gatdula’s work invites us to ask a better question: What would happen if hygienists were actually allowed, encouraged, and mentored to practice at the top of our education?
For Gatdula, that question is embedded in her practice model at Floss Aspen, where she has created a prevention-centered space designed around participation, trust, and patient safety.
“Working in school-based health and primary care taught me that trust is built through far more than clinical skill,” she said. “The pace of an appointment, the sounds, the lighting, and the experience of being treated like a person rather than a procedure all influence how patients engage with care.”
That line stayed with me because it captures something our profession knows intuitively and does not always have the language or structure to defend. The patient experience is clinical because it impacts communication, compliance, understanding, follow-through, and trust.
Gatdula built Floss Aspen around the belief that education, listening, and coaching deserve the same level of importance as instrumentation. Many patients enter healthcare carrying stress, fear, overstimulation, or past negative experiences. In that environment, a calm, prevention-centered appointment is part of care.
This is where Gatdula’s work in airway and functional breathing becomes especially relevant.
A lot of hygienists still view airway awareness, myofunctional therapy, and breathing patterns as advanced or niche areas of practice. Gatdula sees them as increasingly essential to the modern hygienist.
“As healthcare increasingly shifts toward prevention, airway awareness has become impossible to ignore,” she explained. “Dental hygienists are uniquely positioned to recognize patterns because many early signs appear in the mouth first: inflammation, dry mouth, tissue changes, plaque patterns, and oral habits.”
She is careful to clarify that the hygienist’s role is to recognize patterns, create awareness, and help connect patients with appropriate next steps before problems become more complex.
When patients present with inflammation, periodontal disease, clenching, dry mouth, fatigue, poor sleep, anxiety, headaches, chronic stress, and dysfunctional breathing patterns, Gatdula sees a larger picture emerging.
“What surprises me most is not how complicated these patterns are, but how simple many become to identify once we begin paying attention,” she said. “Sometimes the opportunity is not to do more. It is simply to observe more.”
That may be one of the most important takeaways for dental hygienists today. The future of our profession is about becoming better observers, better listeners, better connectors, and better clinical thinkers.
Gatdula’s own personal story has also shaped the way she cares for patients. She is a competitive athlete, yoga instructor, and someone deeply connected to movement and breathwork. She credits yoga with saving her career after early burnout led her toward movement, nervous system regulation, and eventually teaching.
After experiencing a life-threatening medical event at age 26, she began asking herself a simple question: “Am I living with joy and purpose?” That question continues to shape her approach to both patients and professional life.
“Health is not simply about avoiding disease,” she said. “It is what allows us to participate in our families, careers, adventures, and relationships. I want patients leaving my office feeling more connected to themselves, not more dependent on me.”
That philosophy is deeply aligned with prevention. True prevention is the presence of capacity, including the ability to live, function, sleep, breathe, eat, communicate, work, connect, and participate fully in life.
In 2024, Gatdula received the Philips Heart to Hands Award, a recognition honoring clinicians making a meaningful impact in the profession. For her, the award validated a different way of practicing dental hygiene.
“It reinforced something I had already begun to believe: dental hygienists bring tremendous value not only to dentistry, but to healthcare overall,” she said.
That brings us to the bigger conversation about where dental hygienists fit into the future of healthcare. Gatdula believes hygienists belong far beyond the walls of traditional dentistry. As healthcare shifts toward prevention, chronic disease management, and collaborative care, she sees opportunities for hygienists across primary care, sleep medicine, behavioral health, oncology, women’s health, community health, and other settings where prevention belongs.
“Prevention is what we do,” she said. “We are educators, risk assessors, behavior-change coaches, and clinicians trained to identify disease early. The future of healthcare is not more silos, it is collaboration.”
That is the kind of message I wish more hygienists heard earlier in their careers. It is also why mentorship matters so much in our profession. Many hygienists are not lacking talent, education, or ambition. They are lacking models. They have not always seen what is possible or been encouraged to build a career that reflects the full range of who they are and what they can contribute.
Gatdula is changing that. She is a mentor and educator to hygienists, creates collaborative practice opportunities within communities, and will eventually expand her model into other communities. Her advice to the next generation is simple but powerful: remain curious.
“Curious about why disease exists. Curious about the patient sitting in front of them. Curious enough to ask better questions,” she said.
She also challenges hygienists to sit at different tables with physicians, therapists, educators, sleep specialists, public health professionals, and community leaders. Some of her most important lessons about oral health happened outside of dentistry, and that is a reminder for all of us.
The next evolution of dental hygiene will come from expanding where we belong and recognizing the value we already bring.
As Gatdula put it, “Above all else, be passionate in all that you do. If something about dental hygiene no longer fuels you, ask why. The profession has become incredibly versatile and offers countless opportunities to create change and impact lives. Never underestimate the ripple effect of what we do. Sometimes the smallest conversations create the biggest change.”
That may be the heart of this conversation. Dental hygiene is changing, healthcare is changing, patients are changing. The hygienists who stay curious, collaborative, and connected to purpose will help shape what comes next.
About the author
Melissa K. Turner is a dental industry brand strategist, healthcare innovation advisor, and clinical thought leader specializing in saliva, the oral microbiome, and clinical technology. She designs influence systems that shape how innovation earns trust and adoption across dentistry and healthcare. Turner is the co-founder of The Denobi Awards and the National Mobile & Teledentistry Conference, and the creator of the HALO System™ (Human + AI Leadership Optimization). Her work bridges clinical insight, brand strategy, and emerging technology to help organizations and leaders build credibility in an AI-driven world. To become XPERT Certified or receive your free downloadable xerostomia protocol, contact her at hello@melissakturner.com. Click here to subscribe to Melissa’s new weekly LinkedIn newsletter, The Future of Dentistry Report.
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