Preventing Future Aerosol Infections
When this pandemic is over, Seymour Dental will continue the safe restrictions of Covid-19, in the case of future flus and cold season infections. This means the wearing of masks by patients in the waiting room and hand sanitising or, if serious enough, wearing gloves.
If the patient has full flu symptoms, to delay the treatment; however, if urgent, to endeavour to be the last patient of the day, so that full gowns are worn and chemical infection control of the surgery room can be allowed to remain overnight.
There are now three precautions we need to assess for patients, now starting from the telephone, to the waiting room, to surgery. They are:
- Standard precautions
- Contact precautions, and
- Airbourne precautions
Standard precautions
This means infection control procedures we always done to prevent cross contamination and infection between patients and ourselves in the surgery. In summary, this means sterilisation of instruments, decontamination of the surgery, masks and gloves.
Contact precautions
In the Covid-19 world, it means social distancing in the waiting room and between staff.
In the post Covid-19 world (hopefully this will happen!), we will require those who are unwell, sneezing or coughing, to wear a mask, hand sanitise and, if necessary, wear gloves.
Airbourne precautions
As the flu is a respiratory disease it is airbourne and can be carried around the surgery due to certain dental procedures. If a patient is not well but has an urgent need then we will also gown up and reduce the generation of aerosols. This means doing some procedures by hand, or using a rubber dam to prevent the patients breathing from being mixed with the aerosol of the high speed handpiece.
This is the same protocol in the level 2 restrictions of the Covid-19 guidelines. Ideally the patient would be the last one for the day and the surgery is wiped down twice and left overnight. As we have two surgeries we may have to swap surgeries in the middle of the day if the patient’s condition cannot wait till the end of the day.
Need an Appointment?
If you’d like to book an appointment with the dentist at Seymour Dental then call us in Dulwich Hill, Sydney on (02) 9564 2397 or
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