{"id":28913,"date":"2026-04-24T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oraldna.com\/trends-in-salivary-testing\/?p=28913"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:17:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T18:17:30","slug":"most-of-my-career-i-measured-the-wrong-thing-and-how-oraldna-forced-me-to-change-my-scorecard-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oraldna.com\/trends-in-salivary-testing\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/most-of-my-career-i-measured-the-wrong-thing-and-how-oraldna-forced-me-to-change-my-scorecard-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Most of My Career, I Measured the Wrong Thing (And How OralDNA Forced Me to Change My Scorecard) – Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For most of my 32 years as a hygienist, my \u201csuccess\u201d lived in my treatment notes. How many quads of Scaling and Root planing (SRP) did I do this week?<\/span><\/p>\n

How much calculus did I remove?<\/span><\/p>\n

How clean did those roots look and feel when I finished?<\/span><\/p>\n

If I walked out of a room drenched in sweat with polished roots and detailed charting, I felt like I\u2019d done my job. Box checked. Next patient.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there was always this low-level itch in the back of my mind: <\/span>If I\u2019m doing such great work, why do so many of these patients look the same at the next recall?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I\u2019d see them 3, 4, 6 months later and it felt like Groundhog Day. Same bleeding points. Same pocketing. Same \u201cI\u2019ve been brushing really good, I promise\u201d conversations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or the flip side: patients who were genuinely thrilled with their \u201cprogress,\u201d when clinically, very little had actually changed. They felt better, I\u2019d worked hard, but the tissue and the numbers weren\u2019t buying the story we were trying to sell ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014I\u2019ve had some beautiful cases over the years. Big pocket reductions, inflammation gone, stable tissue, patients who genuinely turned a corner. Those are still some of my proudest moments in hygiene.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if I\u2019m honest, for a big chunk of my career, my focus was on <\/span>treatment completed<\/b>, not <\/span>outcomes achieved<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

And those are not the same thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I Thought \u201cTreatment\u201d and \u201cOutcome\u201d Were Synonyms<\/b><\/h3>\n

For a long time, I truly believed:<\/span><\/p>\n