Infection control is of utmost importance for the safety of our staff and our patients. We follow the standards set out by the Manitoba Dental Association and in many areas exceed their requirements.
Some of the things you may notice during your visits is all our instruments are bagged in kits. Once sterilized, when stored in proper bags, the instruments are considered sterile for up to 6 months. As this technique requires an increased number of instruments, many offices will not bag the majority of their instruments, and just store them in drawers or on shelves. With this technique, instruments are only considered sterile for up to 6 hours.
Something else you may notice is our x-ray film has plastic barriers on them. These barriers increase our ability to process the films without contaminating other x-rays. Occasionally we will use films without barriers, and in these cases the films are disinfected for several minutes prior to developing.
A behind the scenes measure we take at the office, which is not a requirement by the dental association, is testing of our sterilizers. Every month our sterilizers are tested to ensure they are working properly and that the instruments we use are safe.
If you have any questions or concerns about any of our infection control procedures, please feel free to talk to any of our staff, or to Christel directly, as she is the individual in charge of overseeing our infection control measures.