How to Clean and Sterilize a Dental Office – Warren, Michigan
Dr. Apsey: Hi, I’m Dr. Greg Apsey here at 11270 Thirteen Mile Road in Warren, Michigan. I’d like to speak with you today and actually do a demonstration through my assistant Natasha on the importance of clean technique and what it looks like in a dental office.
We feel it’s very important, and, you probably do too, that the dental treatment room where you have your dental care done is properly cleaned and you should know whether that’s the case or not. So I just want to give you an idea of what it looks like to clean a room between patients. We just did a surgical extraction of a tooth on a patient and although it can be a bloody procedure, this wasn’t particularly bloody but, in any case, whether we see blood or not, we have to treat this room as though it’s covered in blood. So that’s kind of the thinking behind how we take care of it, how a dentist office should take care of their rooms between patients. So, come on in Natasha.
This is Natasha. And of course she wears gloves and mask and that’s more for her own protection while she’s working. So she’s just going to go through this process it does take awhile. Just want you to get an idea of what actually transpires between each of our patients.
Dental Hygienist: Yeah. First of all we take all of the instruments out of this room.
Dr. Apsey: So everything comes out. Hand pieces. All of the instruments. So first she has to tear the room down basically. So I will stand aside.
And these are going into the sterilization room.
Dental Hygienist: Yeah. They wash and sterilize that instrument. After that, we take off all the plastic covers and the disposable saliva ejectors and the air-water syringes, it’s all disposable, only for one patient.
Dr. Apsey: So all the plastics are removed every time and replaced every time. So, basically, we touch our hand pieces, these instruments here that are not sterilized, we touch them only through plastic. So we never actually touch those instruments when we’re working with patients.
Unfortunately it’s a lot of plastic waste.
Dental Hygienist: Yeah, it’s a lot of plastic but we feel safe. We feel it’s better for our patients.
Dr. Apsey: The idea here is to prevent any cross-contamination between our patients. Anything that might have been spattered with blood, or if our hands had blood on them, and then touched something, that’s a potential source of cross contamination from patient to patient. Hepatitis is passed very easily from patient to patient via blood. And it’s also a very sturdy virus, and lasts on the dry surface for a while. Other diseases as well. Same way. I don’t want that to happen.
So now all the plastics have been removed. Now we use this product, CaviWipes, which is a standard, it’s tuberculocidal and very strong. Tuberculoicidal, bactericidal, viralicidal, fungalicidal, and it’s very strong. These are standard things we use in dentistry. So those are wet basically wet wipes. But much stronger than what we use to clean up a baby.
So even though things have been covered, we still wipe them because it’s possible that one of the covers could’ve been broken. So nothing’s completely sure. So it’s kind of a double standard we have here. I mean we just overdo it.
And those wipes should be wet when we’re using them. If they dry out the solution evaporates. And so Natasha will change them as she goes along because they need to be wet.
So these are left open through the procedure, so they have to be cleaned each time as well.
Safety glasses for the patients are cleaned.
Dental Hygienist: We wipe them and wash them with soap water.
Dr. Apsey: There are certain things that are used over like the chain that holds the napkin on, and that has to be cleaned between patients.
Dental Hygienist: Just in case, drawers, they could be touched.
Dr. Apsey: Right. Sometimes we have to go into the drawers during the procedures so we need to make sure those are clean as well.
Now everything is covered.
Dental Hygienist: It’s all clean plastic.
Dr. Apsey: Costco loves us. Those are Costco clear trash bags.
Dental Hygienist: Of course it takes time between patients. But we think its absolutely necessary.
Dr. Apsey: So then the next step is to cover each and every one of those items, that we’re going to use on the next patient, with these little barriers.
It’s a long process.
I’m running out of things to say and that doesn’t usually happen. But what she’s doing is speaking for itself.
And so when we schedule our patients we have to schedule our time in between our patients so that this process can happen because we run a small office and we need to assure that there is enough time to have the room cleaned out so that we’re ready to go for our next patient.
If you’re here and we’re running a little bit behind is because most likely we were cleaning up after the last dental patient.
And of course after cleaning and before changing the plastic, Natasha has changed her gloves, so she has clean gloves for that second part of the process.
For the portion of the instruments, those drills, the portion of the drills that enter the mouth is sterilized in the autoclave. And we’re going to go and look at that process next, the process that will clean up those instruments so you can get an idea of what that looks like.
Dental Hygienist: And after that we bring new instruments in, keeping them on the counter and bring in our patient.
Dr. Apsey: Right, so now we are ready to see our next patient. Is our next patient here yet?
Dental Hygienist: Not yet. Few minutes more.
Dr. Apsey: All right. So, thank you for watching, if you’ve made it this long. And thank you, Natasha, for doing such a good job for our patients. We’ll do our best for you every time you come to our office. This is what we’re all about, keeping a clean, healthy environment for our patients.
How to Clean and Sterilize a Dental Office – Warren, Michigan
Dr Apsey is a dentist in Warren Michigan. If you would like more information on how we clean and sterilize our Warren dental office, please contact our office at (586) 573-7700.