The Purple Guide: Developing Your Clinical Dental Hygiene Career

Shirley Gutkowski, RDH, BSDH practiced clinical dental hygiene in and around Madison, WI from 1986 to 2003 when she focused her energy on writing and speaking.

After graduating from Marquette University in 1999 through the degree completion program, she became very active in the Amyrdh.com e-mail community monitored by Amy Nieves, RDH, and honed her communication skills to bring new and exciting information to the hundreds of hygienists in that group. This evolved into feature articles and a monthly column in RDH magazine. In an effort to reach the public with her messages and cross over into writing for consumer publications, she wrote a series of articles on oral care for Diabetes Self-Management. This effort won her the prestigious APEX Award for writing excellence. Today she has co-authored a book with Amy Nieves, The Purple Guide: Developing Your Clinical Dental Hygiene Career which has sold out and the second edition is now available. She has written chapters on sealants, and temporary fillings in the textbook Essentials of Dental Hygiene.

Clinical practice has taken a back seat to speaking across the country and internationally as far away as Germany and Australia on minimal intervention dental hygiene through her business Cross Link Presentations.

Shirley is the 2008 Alumna of the Year Marquette University School of Health Science in Dental Hygiene, the 2006 – 2007 President of the Wisconsin Dental Hygienists’ Association and Co-Director of CareerFusion career development for healthcare providers with Beth Thompson and Patti DiGangi. She is also co-director of Adopt a Nursing Home an initiative to increase oral health in dependant adults. She is a member of the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association, the American Dental Hygienist’s Association, American Academy of Dental Hygienists, and the World Congress of Minimally Invasive Dentistry. She’s earned certification of CTM in Toastmasters International, has attained the ACEsthetics Fellowship. She resides in Sun Prairie, WI is married to her husband Mark and is the mother of five sons.

Amy presently works full time as a product specialist at Oral DNA Labs traveling around her region teaching the benefits of saliva testing for periodontal pathogens and potential HPV infections. She's the past MI Specialist for GC America and has also worked as a clinical adjunct instructor and maintains a web site for dental hygiene students and professionals at www.amyrdh.com as well as two supportive email communities, for students and RDHs.
She hosted a monthly column in Contemporary Oral Hygiene from 2000-2007.

Ms. Nieves won the 2003 Mentor of the Year award from Philips Oral Healthcare® and RDH magazine. She was also one of the 8 winners of the Award of Distinction in 2004 from Sunstar America and RDH magazine.
She can be contacted at amy@amyrdh.com