SPECIAL HONORS: Dental Hygienist
Dental hygienist Elaine Loftin (Photo by Stephen Clatterbuck)
Elaine Loftin and Chris Richardson can’t agree on who is luckier. Both think they get the best deal out of their longstanding professional partnership.
She’s a dental hygienist who works with Richardson, a dentist and co-owner of Richardson, Overstreet & Glazier. “I’ve just been very, very fortunate,” Loftin says of her career with the practice. She’s been there since 1970, when the office was under the leadership of J. Gary Maynard.
She was nominated for a special honor in our Top Dentists survey by Richardson. He wrote: “Elaine is an outstanding dental hygienist and has been with our practice for 47 years. Her loyalty and commitment to patient care is unmatched in the city of Richmond. Patients absolutely love Elaine and consistently compliment her as having their best cleaning ever.”
The Richmond resident loves her work. “The patients. That’s the thing that drives me the most,” she says. She’s been working with some of the patients for more than four decades.
“She personally knows all of her patients and cares about them as if they were family members,” says Richardson, who has worked 19 years with Loftin. “She is always so concerned with their well-being and, obviously, their periodontal health.”
Periodontics, a specialized branch of dentistry that treats diseases of the surrounding tissue and structures of the teeth and deals with the placement and maintenance of dental implants, typically involves working in conjunction with a patient’s general dentist. For Loftin, this adds appeal to the job. “You end up feeling like you’re a part of a team,” she explains.
As for the old stigma that people are afraid of the dentist? Loftin says there’s some truth to that, and she sees her role, in part, as trying to comfort patients who experience anxiety. “There’s nothing wrong with them being nervous,” she explains. “We just hope that we can ease their fears.”
Office Manager Betsy Hawkins says Loftin more than succeeds on that count. “[Her patients] are her No. 1 priority,” says Hawkins, who has been with the practice for 46 years herself. “She has a unique and genuine connection with them.”
Richardson notes that Loftin regularly beats everyone to the office in the morning. Her secret to staying passionate about the work? Finding the right coworkers. “We’ve got a great staff. I’m not the only one, believe me,” she says. “If you’re in a good practice and working with doctors that you believe in and you have confidence in what they do, it’s easy to get up and do your job.”
Loftin, who grew up in Badin, North Carolina, says she knew she wanted to work in a medical field when she was in high school in the 1960s.
Loftin says the profession has changed. When she started, dental hygienists were prohibited from administering nitrous oxide and anesthesia. Now, they’re allowed to do that, among other expanded responsibilities. The patients, however, remain her constant “motivating factor.”
“If you’ve got a good place to work and you work with good people and you have good patients, you’ve got it made.”
