Throughout recent years we have all learned to be a bit more aware of what is needed to stay healthy. Most of the time, dentist offices were allowed to stay open under our provincial guideline as we already have so many things in place to prevent infections of all kinds.
First of all: staff are licensed and are always continuing their education with information about the newest and best infection control studies and techniques. This means we know very well how we can keep you and ourselves safe.
We also protect ourselves so we don’t get infected with anything and so that we don’t infect you with anything. These protective measures range from gloves, masks, scrubs, gowns and eye protection to vaccinations and we have an in-office sharps injury prevention program, among many other things.
…staff are licensed and are always continuing their education with information about the newest and best infection control studies and techniques. This means we know very well how we can keep you and ourselves safe.
What about all the instruments were are using for patients? Well, we have a centrally located room dedicated for our instrument and tool sterilization and have a dedicated staff member to manage this room on our busy days.
These are roughly the steps:
1we use a Hydrim (rather than the old fashion scrubbing of instruments by hand), which is like a dishwasher for dental tools, to wash tools hands-free
2 We inspect the result and hand scrub some instruments, as needed
3We use an autoclave (or dental sterilizer) to steam clean our instruments in temperatures up to 270 F and monitor the process with 3 different indicators
4 We keep our items stored in a dry, closed cabinet. We examine all packaging again before using with a patient
If you are a bit worried about the air quality in our office or the things you touch: not only does a professional cleaning company come to our office multiple times per week, we also have a ULV Fogger to disinfect every inch of the office and have dedicated air purification units in each exam room as well as a more units strategically placed throughout the office.
And the water that is used during your treatment for rinsing? We have clean and fresh distilled water delivered directly to our office for all dental treatments, monitor our water and test the quality and flush our waterlines in each exam room throughout the day.
Is that all we do?
No, this is just a quick overview of some of the things we do. And we haven’t even mentioned yet that we try to take care of the environment as well by limiting our contribution to the land fills. We try to avoid single use items and if we need to use them, we encourage single use items and other traditionally non- recyclable dental items to be recycled with our TerraCycle dental recycling box.
We also use an amalgam separator to reduce our amalgam waste.
Do you have any questions?
If it helps you to ask some questions about any of this information, feel free to do so before your appointment. We want you to be comfortable! But rest assured, we are well-trained in this and always follow strict guidelines so you can just focus on getting your teeth cleaned, because we are really good at that as well….and on keeping those pearly whites clean at home.
