Infection Control and Safety Measures In Our Dental Office: COVID Coronavirus
One of the most important things we are doing during the time that our dental office in Phoenix has been closed is preparing our staff to return to work and provide a safer, better dental experience. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our time has been well-spent educating, planning, and training our team of committed dental professionals.
Patient Interviews and Social Distancing
Before a patient arrives in the office, we:
Use prepared phone scripts to filter patients during the appointment confirmation call to identify potential carriers before they enter the dental office
Reschedule patients who describe any concerning signs of illness or who have any signs of respiratory illness, cough or fever out 2 weeks
Encourage patients to call in and reschedule their dental visits if they develop symptoms of a respiratory infection such as a cough, sore throat, or fever on or before the day of their dental appointment.
To promote Social Distancing, we:
Prioritize high-risk patients, such as immune-compromised, over 60, diabetic, compromised lung function, with early morning appointments to avoid contact with other people
Schedule patients in the treatment area of our Phoenix dental office in a staggered manner and limit patients in the waiting room at a time.
Instruct patient escorts to remain in their cars to limit the number of people in the waiting room and promote social distancing
Encourage a “virtual waiting room” by having patients wait in their car before their appointment. We will contact them via phone when the treatment area is sanitized and ready for them.
Training Our Dental Team
Reinforce effective, proper hand-washing techniques, ingraining reflexive rewashing, and hand sanitation throughout our patients’ time in our dental office in Phoenix. This is a basic skill but is one of the most important things we can do to prevent the spread of disease. Research shows that real-world compliance is poor and it is poorly performed. The time spent ensuring that our team does it well and often has been and will continue to be a priority.
Researched and performed drills for proper use of personal protective equipment (PPE) before caring for a patient to prevent contamination.
Monitor our team members and encourage those who do not feel well to stay home. We provide paid time off and have backup staff on-call if someone is ill to avoid pressures on sick staff members to come to work.
Take the temperature of everyone in the office. Anyone with an elevated temperature, 100.4 F and over, is sent home.
Limit the numbers of staff in the office to enable appropriate social distancing within the office between our team members.
Implemented specific checklists and protocols for patient intake, dental treatment, room sanitation, and residual aerosol removal. These ensure reliable and repeated performance to decrease our patients’ and our staff's exposure to virus particulate left on surfaces and lingering in the air after a patient procedure.
All these measures can help to prevent transmission to others.
All these measures can help to prevent transmission to others.
Shoes
Staff is to wear smooth, nonporous shoes that can be wiped down, disinfected, and left in the office.
Gloves
Put on clean, non-sterile gloves upon entry into the patient room or care area.
Change gloves if they become torn or heavily contaminated.
Remove and discard gloves when leaving the patient room or care area, and immediately perform hand hygiene.
Gowns
Put on a clean isolation gown before entry into the patient room or area for procedures where splashes, sprays, or aerosol-generating procedures are anticipated.
Remove before leaving the treatment area.
Safety measures in our Reception Lobby
Upon arrival, patients are:
Provided hand sanitizer or escorted to a handwashing station
Asked about the presence of symptoms of a respiratory infection and history of travel or contact with possible COVID-19 patients.
Provided with an oral rinse of 1% hydrogen peroxide before treatment
Assessed for respiratory symptoms and fever with a hospital-grade electric thermometer using disposable sheaths
If fever temperature of 100.4 degrees F or higher or respiratory symptoms are present, they will be immediately rescheduled and instructed to seek medical evaluation and testing for COVID-19.
Measures taken in our reception lobby:
Ensure social distancing in the waiting room by placing seating a minimum of 6 feet apart and encouraging using their auto as a Virtual Waiting Room.
Remove anything that multiple people may handle that is not easily disinfected from the waiting room such as magazines, toys, brochures
Use of disposable covers for reception patient computer mouse and keyboard to be changed between patients
Frequent wipe down of waiting rooms surfaces, furniture, bathrooms, door handles, tables, light switches.
Reception and front desk safety measures:
Install physical barriers or partitions (e.g., glass or plastic windows) if possible, at reception areas to limit close contact between reception and potentially infectious patients.
Continual use of advance true HEPA air filters with germicidal UV filtering, Advanced Hydrated Photocatalytic Oxidation (AHPCO®), and bi-polar ionization to trap and kill virus particles and other microscopic particles hanging in the air. Our advanced air filtration system does not produce ozone contamination.
Protocols For The Clinical Team
Dentistry has always had to deal with viruses and bacterial disease exposure, from hepatitis and HIV to the current coronavirus pandemic. We adhere to strict standards of protection and contamination reduction precautions in treatment rooms of our dental office in Phoenix. We have adopted stricter protocols and checklists to ensure greater attention to detail.
Hand Washing is performed by our team:
Before and after all patient contact, contact with potentially infectious material, and before putting on and after removing personal protective equipment (PPE), including gloves.After removing PPE to remove any pathogens that might have been transferred while removing them.Washing hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or use of hand sanitizer and rubbing dry for 30 seconds
Personal Protective Equipment we use:
Wear PPE- face mask, gloves, face shield, eye protection, gowns, head/hair coverings. Masks are used once and replace if soiledN95 masks are used during treatment procedures where blood or saliva aerosols are produced.Reusable eye protection (e.g., goggles) is cleaned and disinfected according to the manufacturer’s instructions after each patient.
Let’s Prevent Covid-19
We hope sharing the practices and procedures we use to ensure a safe environment for all of our patients and team members will help our patients feel secure in the knowledge that we are using the most current recommendations by the CDC for prevention of COVID-19 in our office to provide the safest environment for our patients, staff, and families.
Patients in the Dental Chair
During dental treatment
Molecular iodine is added to all of our patient water sources. The current research shows that iodine, even at a 0.5% concentration, can completely inactivate the Coronavirus in 15 seconds. Any aerosols that are created during dental care are created with this highly effective iodine-water.Use our mobile x-ray equipment in the dental treatment room to reduce the need for the patient to move. Once the patient has left the treatment room, the HEPA -Germicidal air filtration unit will remove potentially infectious particles.Special precautions and barriers will be used when performing Aerosol Generating procedures (AGP), such as negative pressure suction devices, rubber dam barriers, and high volume evacuation.
After clinical treatment
All non-disposable medical equipment used for patient care should be cleaned and disinfected according to the manufacturer’s instructions.Ensure that environmental cleaning and disinfection procedures are followed consistently and correctly.Use of EPA-registered, hospital-grade disinfectant to decontaminate surfaces that cannot be covered with a disposable barrier for appropriate contact times as indicated on the product’s labelEach dental treatment room shall have a dedicated true HEPA, germicidal UV air filtration unit that will continuously run for the duration of the dental treatment day and 2 hours following the last patient’s dental care.Patient treatment will be staggered between rooms to allow the HEPA air filtration unit to process any aerosolized blood or saliva to the unit's highest efficiency rating before the next patient is seated.
