Anna M. Pattison, RDH, MS received her BS degree in Dental Hygiene from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, in 1967 and her MS in Dental Hygiene Education and Administration from Columbia University, New York, the following year. She is currently an associate professor and former chair of the Department of Dental Hygiene at USC.

Anna began teaching in the USC Department of Dental Hygiene in 1968. She then served as the associate director of Dental Auxiliary Occupations for the University of California, Los Angeles, Allied Health Professions Project from 1970-1971. She moved to Switzerland in 1971 and was a clinician and instructor in the Department of Periodontology at the University of Zurich . In 1972 she returned to USC for 1 year as an assistant professor in the Periodontics Department. She then moved to Boston to become an assistant professor in the Department of Periodontology at the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine and a clinical instructor at the Forsyth School for Dental Hygienists from 1973-1975.  She returned to USC in 1975 and has been a full-time associate professor since then, and served as Dental Hygiene department chair from 1984 to 1989.

Anna is the co-author of the textbook, Periodontal Instrumentation, with her husband, Gordon Pattison, DDS. This text is used in dental and dental hygiene schools throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, and Asia . It has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean. It will soon be translated into German, Polish, Arabic, and Farsi. She has also contributed several chapters to the last five editions of Carranza’s Clinical Periodontology, which is available in seven languages and is the most widely used periodontology textbook in the world. These textbooks have established Anna Pattison and the USC Department of Dental Hygiene as the world’s leading experts in the field of periodontal instrumentation.

In addition to presenting lecture courses and hands-on instrumentation courses to practitioners for the past 30 years, Anna is renowned for presenting faculty in-service instrumentation courses for dental and dental hygiene instructors in the United States and abroad. She has repeatedly been a featured speaker for the Annual Sessions of the American Academy of Periodontology, American Dental Hygienists’ Association, Canadian Dental Hygienists’ Association, 25 state dental hygiene associations, as well as for 10 national associations and universities in Europe, Australia , and Asia . She has been an invited featured lecturer at more than 20 universities in the United States including Harvard University and the Universities of California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Michigan, West Virginia, Rhode Island, and Maine.

Currently, Anna and her husband Gordon Pattison are co-directors of the Pattison Institute, which offers periodontal instrumentation courses throughout the United States and Canada . Anna is also the editor in chief of Dimensions of Dental Hygiene.

Anna M. Pattison, RDH, MS
Editor In Chief