Infection control is paramount in a dental clinic. At Riverstone Family Dental, infection control is rigidly reinforced in our day to day operations. My number one priority is the safety of my staff and patients. I would like to give a special mention to my team. They have contributed towards this blog post and strive to follow and improve our day to day infection control policies.
QUESTION ONE:
What is your Hand Hygiene like?
Hand washing and alcohol rubbing are necessary to prevent infections spread through physical contact. Any skin breakages must be covered, while regular moisturising is encouraged. Education must be provided for each staff member on the importance of hand hygiene. This enables compliance because staff understand it protects their health and the health of our patients. Educating staff about the importance of infection control is invaluable. Infection control is the most fundamentally important objective in our day to day operations. Here are some ways to achieve this:
- Audit day to day tasks and immediately prioritise giving guidance to new and existing staff
- Encourage insight and understanding of the reason for the steps in the process
- Invest in more equipment to increase efficacy – as the business grows consider investing back to streamline systems and processes
QUESTION TWO:
Are you using personal protective equipment?
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) refers to ‘barriers’ to prevent spread of infection between patients and staff. These include:
- eye protection through glasses
- a mask for water droplets or air contamination
- gloves to prevent skin to skin contact
- gowns or scrubs
- hair nets
Some diseases can be spread through water spray or even air. Therefore, it is important to minimise this risk by having PPE barriers.
QUESTION THREE:
What is your cleaning sequence like?
The way we clean the clinic room is by starting from the least contaminated zone to the most contaminated zone. This is important to prevent cross contamination. Also, it allows an efficient flow between patients. When passing instruments, we strive to do it in such a way so as to prevent contamination. One of the key concepts of getting cleaning right is to simplify it. I find that by having logical steps and a good progression of the infection control process, staff find it much easier to get into a routine. Automation also helps and I achieve this by:
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- Having defined clean and dirty areas
- Ensuring that there is a place for everything and everything is in its place (aka bordering on OCD)
- Easy repeatability
- Robotics .. we’re not too far off
QUESTION FOUR:
What do you do with sharps and contaminated waste?
Disposing of sharps into their designated sharps containers is the responsibility of our doctors. We do this because it minimises risk of needle stick injury to our staff. Assistants and nurses should not have to stress or worry about handling of sharps, there are many other more important clinical tasks. Both sharps and contaminated waste are separated and handled by a waste company.
QUESTION FIVE:
What is your sterilisation like?
Look for a modern and efficient autoclave, preferable one which is digital. Autoclaves should be annually validated to ensure they are in working order. Every morning, we run 3 tests to ensure the autoclave is ready to sterilise equipment throughout the day. Furthermore, additional tests are used during every sterilisation cycle to ensure the cycle has been successful and the results are logged. Every cycle is tracked and critical items can be traced back to a particular sterilisation cycle.
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I hope this brief summary has helped you understand five key infection control topics. I have oversimplified this and nothing compares to reading a practice’s Infection Control Policy Handbook. This is such an important topic of discussion and I would love your feedback and recommendations. Have any questions or recommendations? Please call us on:
