Must-Have Infection Control Dental Supplies

Similarly to all other types of medical practices, every dental practice will need to ensure that they are doing all they can to prevent cross-infection in their premises. Whilst, generally speaking, the risk of infection in dentistry is fairly low, nevertheless, it is still important to mitigate any potential risks in this regard. For this reason, infection control is just as essential as any other measures that you put in place to keep your patients safe.

A huge part of infection control is keeping your practice clean, ensuring that any equipment/instruments you use are sterile and requiring all members of staff to maintain good personal hygiene. Thankfully, there are a number of different dental supplies that can help you to ensure that you’re upholding your ethical and legal responsibilities relating to infection control. If you’re planning on buying dental supplies online and you’re wondering what you’ll need to assist with infection control, below is some information that will be beneficial in this regard.

Keeping the practice clean

All dental practices should have a cleaning schedule which is followed to a tee to ensure that everyone knows who is responsible for cleaning and how frequently cleaning should be carried out. This will prevent anything from being overlooked in this regard.

To assist with general cleaning, you should use a disinfectant spray for rapid disinfection on hard surfaces including; work surfaces, metal surfaces and operating lights. In addition, you should also use surface disinfectant wipes on hard surfaces including; dental furniture, equipment and non-invasive medical devices.

Decontaminating equipment/instruments

It goes without saying that medical equipment and instruments must be decontaminated between patients and this is of the utmost importance. The method required for decontamination differs depending on the level of risk associated with the piece of equipment/instrument.

Whilst you will likely use either a washer/disinfector or an ultrasonic bath, you may also need to use products such as; Aspirator Daily to clean and disinfect all types of aspiration equipment, Instruments Disinfectant to clean and disinfect all types of cold instruments and Rotary Instrument Disinfectant to clean and disinfect burs, polishers and other rotary instruments.

General hand hygiene

Due to the fact that infections are commonly passed on by the hands, you should also have adequate hand hygiene protocol in place. Nowadays the process of keeping your hands clean is referred to as ‘hand hygiene’ because it includes both handwashing and using sanitising gels.

As well as encouraging hand washing frequently throughout the day using running water and liquid soaps, it is often incredibly beneficial to have something like antimicrobial hand sanitising foam in all rooms of your practice. You can then ensure that at all times all members of staff are easily able to disinfect their hands.

Using personal protective equipment

Of course, both dental care professionals and also patients should also be wearing personal protective equipment, PPE. Depending on the dental treatment being provided to the patient, PPE will differ, but it is important to ensure that all employees know what should be worn.

From disposable gloves, plastic aprons and face masks for staff to bibs and eye protection for patients, all of these items play a vital role in protecting the wearer and when disposed of correctly after use, they will also prevent cross-infection.

Buying dental supplies online

Hopefully, the information above will be helpful when you’re wanting to buy dental supplies online to assist you with infection control. When investing in the correct products and using them on a regular basis as required, you can easily ensure that you’re not only providing the highest quality of patient care, but that you’re also protecting both patients and staff from any consequences of poor infection control.

When looking to buy dental supplies online, be sure to visit the Dent Direct website. We have a range of infection control products, all of which will be incredibly beneficial to use in your practice, so feel free to browse these today. Of course, we have a wide selection of other dental supplies that may also be of interest to you as well, so we invite you to explore the rest of our website too. Should you have any questions at all about our infection control supplies or any of the other products on our site, please don’t hesitate to contact us, our experienced team will gladly assist you.