We hope this blog finds you and your family in good health. Our community has been through a lot over the last few months, and all of us are looking forward to resuming our normal habits and routines. While many things have changed, one thing has remained the same: our commitment to your safety.
Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice and you may have seen this during your visits to our office. Our infection control processes are made so that when you receive care, it’s both safe and comfortable. We want to tell you about the infection control procedures we follow in our practice to keep patients and staff safe.
Our office follows infection control recommendations made by the American Dental Association (ADA), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). We follow the activities of these agencies so that we are up-to-date on any new rulings or guidance that may be issued. We do this to make sure that our infection control procedures are current and adhere to each agencies’ recommendations. During our minimal operating time our staff has cleaned our entire office from floor to ceiling
You may see some changes when it is time for your next appointment. We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff.
Additional precautions we have been taking include:
- Taking every patients temperature, and triaging for symptoms before scheduling and then again before seating patients.
- Removing all magazines and children’s toys from our waiting room.
- Scheduling patients far enough apart to ensure thorough disinfection of all surfaces between each patient, and cleaning our waiting room and front office three times per morning and afternoon.
- Having all patients do a pre-procedural rinse with Peroxyl- [This recommendation was brought to us by the ADA/NDA to use a 1% Hydrogen Peroxide rinse to lower the bacterial count in the oral cavity.]
- We spent six full days between six staff members deep cleaning our entire office with Clorox, Cavicide, and bleach.
- Deep cleaning of our play area and our waiting room chairs and removing all magazines, toys, and sign-in sheets from our waiting room.
- Maximizing our use of proper sterilization techniques.
- Ensuring only one patient at a time, asking patients to not bring in any friends or family members to their visit, and not allowing anyone to wait in our waiting room
- During check out times we ask patients to stay in the operatories until our staff is ready to check them out
- Ensuring every staff member is constantly wearing a level three mask and gloves.
- Changing all our office air filters
As you may already know, our office has always used a Negative Ion Generator to purify the air in all of our operatories. As well as cleaning our uniforms every night in the office.
In order to continue to stop the spread of COVID-19 even after opening to the general public we will also be implementing the following to protect both our patients and staff:
- Taking all our staffs temperatures upon their arrival in the morning and after lunch.
- N-95 Masks for the entire staff.
- Every staff member upon arrival in the morning and from lunch with Peroxyl- [This recommendation was brought to us by the ADA/NDA to use a 1% Hydrogen Peroxide rinse to lower the bacterial count in the oral cavity.]
- Taking every staff member’s temperature, and triaging for symptoms before working.
- Ensuring every staff member is constantly wearing an N-95 mask and gloves.
- The Dentist, Dental Assistants, and Dental Hygienist’s will be wearing full face shields, and surgical gowns.
- Use of disposable surgical gowns and Personal Protective Equipment
- Minimizing the use of any instruments that create aerosol- we will NOT be using the ultrasonic scaler for Prophies (cleanings) until recommended by the ADA/NDA
We look forward to seeing you again and are happy to answer any questions you may have about the steps we take to keep you, and every patient, safe in our practice. To make an appointment, please call our office at (775) 827-5511. Thank you for being our patient. We value your trust and loyalty and look forward to welcoming back our patients, neighbors and friends.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ramin Homanfar and Team