Visiting the Dentist while Social Distancing: Is it safe to go during the COVID-19 crisis?

• Hand Hygiene:   All dental professionals must maintain hand hygiene at all times, both before and after putting their gloves on.  Hands are washed prior to gloving.  Once the gloves are on, contact is limited to just the patient and the sterilised equipment.
  
• Personal Protective Equipment:   PPEs are highly important in our practice including gloves, masks, eye protection, face shields, protective clothing such as scrubs and disposable gowns, head covers, protective footwear and shoe covers.
  
• Sterilisation of reusable tools:   As much as possible, we use disposable tools and materials on our patients.   Where tools are reusable, they are subjected to thorough sterilisation using pressure and steam (autoclave), are bagged and tracked with a barcode system that integrates into each patient’s file.
  
• Cleaning and decontamination:   Before and after each consultation/procedure, our surgery rooms are thorough cleaned and decontaminated.  All exposed surfaces are wiped down with detergent or chlorine solution after every patient. 
  
• Environmental barriers:   Areas that cannot be regularly washed or wiped with detergents are covered with disposable environmental barriers that are stripped and disposed of between each treatment.  This includes the screens and buttons on the dental chair and handles.
  
• Additional infection control precautions:   This includes patient screening for COVID-19 risk, pre-procedural mouthwash, booking schedule management, waiting room management, use of hand sanitisers before and after each appointment, glass screen barrier on reception counter, contactless payment processing, disposable pens, environmental cleaning of non-clinical areas and touch points after each patient. Magazines, books, toys and water dispenser have been removed from the waiting area to avoid cross-contamination.
  
• Procedure Restrictions: Specific guidelines were released by the Australian Dental Association (ADA) to direct dentists with the types of procedures that may be performed or deferred under each level of restriction. The services we offer at this time and our practice protocols will strictly follow these guidelines. The key principle under Level 2 Restrictions is the provision of treatments that are unlikely to generate aerosols.
  

We will expand on what these Level 2 Restrictions mean in the coming days, such as what types of procedures and services we can provide based on the understanding of COVID-19 risk and questions that have emerged in the past few months.

I hope this somehow helps you in understanding the infection control procedures that we have so that we can give you some peace of mind if you are wary of coming to the dentist. We take infection control very seriously at New Leaf Dentists. Though things are slowly easing up NSW, rest assured that we will continue to be vigilant in our commitment to maintaining a safe environment for our dentists, staff, patients and visitors.

If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to connect with us.  Call us on 02 4367 6222 or send us a message on social media (if urgent) with your queries and we’ll do our best to help you.

Article by Dr Rouel Vergara DMD

Dr Rouel Vergara DMD – Principal Dentist & Director New Leaf Dentists.

Rouel obtained his Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) from the University of the East in 1998. He holds a Certificate in Training and Assessment from Macquarie College in Sydney.

He is a member of the Australian Dental Association (ADA and ADA NSW), a committee member of ADA NSW & a mentor for the ADA NSW Professional Transitional Support Mentoring Program.