Why We Take Infection Control So Seriously
Without proper infection control techniques, many of the things in a dental office, including people, instruments, counter tops, chairs --even computer components - can be carriers for cross contamination and contribute to the spreading of germs, bacteria and diseases. Infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi. These diseases can be spread, directly or indirectly, between dental staff and between patients.
Infection control procedures are precautions taken in health care settings to prevent the spread of diseases. At Malki Dental in River Edge we care about your safety and work hard to prevent the spread of infection. Before you enter the operatory, all surfaces, such as the dental chair, dental light, drawer handles, countertops, cuspidors have been cleaned and decontaminated. All the handles of our equipment are covered with protective barriers, which are replaced after each patient.
Our infection control procedures and guidelines include:
- Following proper hand hygiene through hand washing and the use of hand sanitizer
- Maintaining appropriate personal protective equipment (masks, gowns, gloves and eyewear) and personal hygiene.
- Proper instrument sterilization and preparation of all instruments using heat sterilization
- Ensuring the environment of our dental office is clean and neat
- Preventing the storage of anything on the floor
- Wipe disinfection of each component in the dental operatory using High level disinfectants
- Spray disinfection in addition to wipe disinfection using using High Level Disinfection for the appropriate amount of time
- Countertops made of non porous bacteria resistant material
- Air Purification using Surgically Clean Air Units and IQAir units throughout the office that remove bacteria, viruses, Dental aerosols and allergens that are 0.03 microns in size.
- Dental water line disinfection and treatment Clean Hands
- Washing our hands and wearing gloves to keep you safe
Although you may not see it, we wash our hands before putting on our gloves and again when we take our gloves off after treating each patient. Keeping hands clean is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid the spread of germs.
Safe Water - we Use a clinical water treatment system to keep you safe
We take every measure possible to conform with current recommendations for water quality and to always strive to develop new approaches to ensure the quality of water used in our dental office. At Malki Dental we test the water used for treatment. We also clean and disinfect the dental units at recommended intervals. And recently have gone above and beyond by installing separate water filtration units in each chair in our office.
Personal Protective Equipment - as you all know we use PPEs as well as eye protection for all dental procedures
We now will ask you to wear eye protection while in our chair. Why? Because the added layer of protection keeps your eyes safe from liquids or particles that could splash or drop into your eye during dental procedures. That is why we wear the personal protective equipment for all dental procedures any time there is potential blood borne pathogen exposure. We also now use protective covers for our work surfaces, including chairs and computers. We change all these covers between each patient. It's up to us to make sure every dental visit is a safe visit.
Sterilization - all instruments used on each patient get heat sterilized in one of our 2 autoclaves.
Our instruments are placed in special bags that have chemical indicators on them to ensure the instruments are surgically clean and ready for use on each patient.
Our autoclaves get biologically tested weekly to ensure that the machines are functioning the way they should be.
Spray and wipe disinfection is completed on anything that can not go into the autoclave. We use a high level disinfectant that kills bacteria, virus and fungus from surfaces. Surfaces like the countertops, chairs, sinks, cuspidors, x-ray units, etc all get cleaned using high level disinfectants
Surgically Clean Air & IQAir - are new additions to our practice. These 2 air purification system removes bacteria, viruses and aerosols from the air as small as 0.03 Microns. The system cleans the air every 5 minutes. So you can rest assured that when you enter each of our operaties the air will be considered Surgically Clean.
As you can see at Malki Dental we take infection control very seriously. We follow these very strict infection control steps to minimize the spread of germs and diseases and keep our patients safe. Your well being is important to us.
Now that you know we're keeping you safe, please contact us to schedule your appointment with Malki Dental.
