12 Apr Decontamination and Cleanliness Behind the Scenes

When you are in the treatment room with your dentist or hygienist you probably wouldn’t know what goes on behind the scenes to keep everyone safe.

As dental professionals we take cross infection control and cross contamination procedures very seriously. However, what does happen? And how can you be certain of your safety?

All dental practices have a code of compliance when it comes to decontamination. This document is called HTM01-05 if you want to google this!

The document covers

• Decontamination
• Reprocessing of instruments
• Design of surgeries and local decontamination units
• Screening and vaccination of dental personnel

The purpose of the guidance is to keep our patients and our staff safe and as such dental practices have one of the best records for safety in the healthcare profession.

We are always happy for you to inspect our decontamination areas and procedures and we are proud of our facilities to have such great standards.

Some of the facts that you may not be aware of

• A new pair of gloves is worn for every patient
• Instruments are taken from the surgeries to a decontamination room
• There they are either disposed of or reprocessed
• Reprocessing consists of cleansing and then sterilising
• Sterilising is carried out in an autoclave which heats the instruments up under pressure to 134 degrees C
• Instruments are then bagged and ready to be used again

All the machinery that is used to reprocess the instruments also has to be tested daily, weekly, monthly and yearly and logs kept for safety records.

All these systems are also audited every 12 weeks and all staff have to have regular updates in decontamination as part of their continuing professional development cycles.

Our staff also have regular health checks and have had a full array of blood investigations just to be on the dental register.

So next time you come along for your appointment take a thought for all the activity “Behind the scenes” to keep us all safe.

We are delighted to show you around our facilities, do ask if this interests you.