DEH2804L – Dental Hygiene Clinic III is the third and typically final clinical course in Florida's Dental Hygiene A.S. curriculum, taken in the last term. Broward College lists it at 4 credits with 192 clinical contact hours — a figure that conveys the reality better than the credit count does.
By this point students are near-practitioners. The course is where a dental hygiene program transitions a student from performing supervised procedures to managing a caseload independently: seeing patients at something approaching practice pace, handling complexity without prompting, and exercising the clinical judgment that will be required without an instructor standing behind them.
Case difficulty is at its highest. Students treat patients with moderate to advanced periodontitis requiring quadrant scaling and root planing, patients with complex medical histories and polypharmacy, patients with implants and prosthetics, and patients whose behavior or anxiety complicates care. Periodontal maintenance and the evaluation of previously treated patients feature prominently, since that is a large share of real practice.
Time management becomes an explicit competency. Earlier clinical courses allow generous appointment lengths; this course compresses them toward practice reality, and students are assessed on completing quality care within realistic time.
Most programs also use this course for board examination preparation — the National Board Dental Hygiene Examination and the clinical examination required for licensure — including mock clinical boards under examination conditions.
Offered at approximately 17 Florida institutions with accredited dental hygiene programs, including Broward, College of Central Florida, Daytona State, Eastern Florida State, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Florida SouthWestern, Gulf Coast State, Indian River State, Palm Beach State, Pensacola State, Pasco-Hernando, Santa Fe, South Florida State, State College of Florida, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee State, and Valencia.
Florida's older population sustains substantial periodontal maintenance demand, which is precisely the work this course concentrates on. Dental hygiene remains among the better-compensated associate-degree occupations in the state, with employment distributed statewide.
Broward lists this course at 4 credits carrying 192 clinical contact hours. Across the clinical sequence — DEH1800L at 128 hours, plus subsequent clinics — a Florida dental hygiene student accumulates several hundred hours of supervised patient care. Transcript evaluators should compare contact hours rather than credits, and prospective students should plan their outside commitments around clinic schedules.
The SCNS title is Dental Hygiene Clinic III; Broward publishes it as Dental Hygiene III Clinic. Under SCNS these are equivalent. Programs also differ in how many clinical courses they run — some sequence three, others four — so the numbering of "Clinic III" does not always mean the same position in the program. Compare the full clinical sequence when evaluating transfer.
Prerequisites are the preceding clinical sequence, enforced with a minimum grade of C. Broward lists DEH2701L as a corequisite. Admission to the dental hygiene program precedes all of it. Verify locally, since clinical sequencing differs by program.
Graduates of a CODA-accredited program are eligible to sit the National Board Dental Hygiene Examination and a clinical examination, then apply for Florida licensure through the Board of Dentistry under Chapter 466, F.S. Because this is the final clinical course, board preparation and licensure application typically run concurrently with it, and students should track application deadlines carefully — missing a board window can delay employment by months.
As in earlier clinics, students must complete defined patient experience requirements at specified difficulty classifications, and at many programs recruiting those patients is substantially the student's own responsibility. In the final term this becomes acute: a student short of required experiences late in the sequence has limited time to recover, and graduation can be delayed. Students should track requirements continuously rather than assessing them at the end.
Students who have been comfortable in earlier clinics frequently find this course difficult for a reason that is not about skill: the appointment lengths compress. Producing quality care in the time a practice allows is a distinct competency, and it is what employers assess in a working interview. Instructors generally treat time pressure as deliberate preparation rather than as an inconvenience.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026