COVID Office Protocols

There have been many questions and reports regarding the safety of dental offices. The emergence of SARS-COV2 has heightened the general public’s concerns about infection control protocols everywhere.

Dentistry in general and our office specifically has been following aerosol protection protocols for decades. These are designed to prevent transmission of many pathogens including HIV, TB, Hepatitis and now SARS-COV2. As such our dental team are experts in infection control procedures. We are required by law to continually re-educate ourselves with regard to the appropriate measures necessary to protect both our patients and our team from disease transmission.

The dental office has always been one of the safest places anyone can visit. I can only think of 2 places that carry out more stringent cross infection control protocols, an operating theatre and an infectious disease laboratory.

In addition to required protocols, our office has an air exchange system in place since inception that vents air and replaces it with filtered outside air rather than recirculating. We run a sanitization system every night to ensure that all areas have been addressed.

The majority of the recent changes implemented in our office are in the reception area. In addition to temperature checks, you will find that our appointments are spaced differently to stagger patient flow. We have implemented additional infection control procedures from the back office and perform them between patients in the front office.

As always, when new high-quality evidence becomes available, we will be adjusting and addressing our protocols to ensure that we are staying well ahead of the baseline requirements for cross infection control in the dental office.