Working

by Jeanne M. Delaney

"People do not want to see me coming," jokes Elaine Amato, RDH, BS, an infection control coordinator from New York. Amato monitors several different sites along the Hudson River to ensure that they are maintaining hygienic standards. She explains that her work is often a case of looking under the sink and saying, "This doesn’t belong here." Of course, she's quick to add that other cases are more involved.

Amato oversees the infection control practices in 10 satellite health centers in the New York Hudson Valley area, including Peekskill, Beacon, Poughkeepsie, Amenia, Pine Plains, Dover Plains, Monsey, and Wallkill. In addition, she monitors two migrant health care centers in New Paltz and Florida/Goshen, New York. Three of these sites have dental clinics, and all of the clinics accept Medicaid and Medicare, where patients can pay based on a sliding scale according to their income.

Amato says the biggest difference in practicing outside the traditional dental hygiene setting is that she no longer has that one-to-one connection with patients in the dental chair. "It had always been so satisfying to introduce children to the dental experience, to help overcome their fears or to watch the progress of poor oral hygiene to good compliance. However, my main focus is still the health of the patient and that of the health care worker, because I am responsible for seeing our health facilities comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA] regulations."

Amato has studied other aspects of infection control in the ambulatory health care setting, but she says that her knowledge of dental health gives her an edge over other infection control personnel. A dental hygienist for 45 years, in 1999, Amato accepted the infection control position for Hudson River Health Care (HRHC), the same health center where she worked as a dental hygienist putting dental sealants on children’s teeth at schools in Peekskill for 10 years. And by the time she retired, Amato had placed 18,000 sealants.

Amato explains that Peekskill is a community with high decayed, missing, and filled tooth surface index (DMFS) scores without fluoridated water, and that HRHC was awarded a state grant to make free sealants and dental education available to children.

On being a dental hygienist in the field of infection control, Amato comments: "I believe I have a unique opportunity to show the diversity of the dental hygiene profession and how well suited hygienists are as ‘watch people’ in maintaining the standards of infection control at the office or clinic."

Amato graduated from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Farmingdale in 1956. She says she misses practicing dental hygiene, especially working with kids, and considers herself a "pediatric dental hygienist."