All industries have been hit bit the recent pandemic, but the dental industry has had to deal with specific challenges. Sanitary restrictions have made things harder for them, and in some areas, many had to either close or restrict their service offering. Now that things are slowly getting back to a new normal, dental practices have to make sure that they take the steps necessary to protect themselves, the public, and their employees. Here’s how dental practices can ensure they are Covid safe.
Be Proactive:
You can’t take a reactive approach to a disease that is said to be asymptomatic in around 40% to 80% of cases. If you wait for a case to breakout, then the damage will already be done. You need to take an approach to decontamination proactively, not just do a deep clean if you had a case.
You need to make sure that every treatment room and the patient area is disinfected on a fixed schedule and after every procedure. This is especially important when it comes to treatment areas where aerosol-generating procedures are performed, which is practically every procedure in dentistry.
Protect Your Client Facing People:
You also have to make sure that you protect your staff from clients coming in. Facemasks, unless particle blocking ones like N-95s, will only protect others. In this case, you will need to take a look at shield guards. If you want to know more about these and how they relate to the latest CDC and AHA, check out sneezeguardez.com. You’ll learn more about how they can be used to protect your employees and supplement the guidelines set forth by both organizations.
Keeps Everything Clean:
You also want to make sure that you take steps to keep everyone’s hands and surfaces clean. Supplying gloves is nice, but these can be tricky. Gloves can get just as dirty as hands, and people will often tend to wear gloves for much longer than they should. People also tend to stop washing their hands when they wear gloves.
Instead, you should make sure that you have sanitizer present everywhere. Make sure that people sanitize their hands before they get in. Introduce a policy where your employees have to sanitize their hands every 15 minutes. Encourage them to wash their hands with water and soap whenever they can as well.
When it comes to surfaces, you also cannot rely solely on hand-cleaning to remove pathogens. You will need to use things such as UV light disinfection and hydrogen peroxide vapor. There are plenty of companies offering this service, but you have to make sure that they can produce concrete and verifiable evidence of their claims before you hire them.
Conclusion:
These are all things dental practices can do to reduce the chances of Covid infections in their office. Make sure that you don’t only do your part, but that every member of your team is involved for the best results.
Maria Khatun Mona is a Founder and Editor of Nursing Exercise Blog. She is a Nursing and Midwifery Expert. Currently she is working as a Registered Nurse at Evercare Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has great passion in writing different articles on Nursing and Midwifery. Mail her at “[email protected]”
