Prevent Infection Control Breaches with an Infection Control Coordinator

Despite the emphasis on infection prevention being “prevention,” it is unfortunately inevitable that infection control breaches occur from time to time.

The handling of these incidents can have a significant impact on patients, staff, and the dental office itself. You may be tempted just to sweep it under the rug or shift the blame onto someone else, but adhering to established protocols is the best and safest approach for managing infection control breaches.

How do infection control breaches occur?

Infection control breaches can occur at any step of the dental process. But most often, accidents have been known to occur during the cleaning and sterilization process of patient care equipment.

One notable incident happened at a Florida College of Dental Medicine involving over 1,100 patients. All one thousand of these patients had to be notified of the possibility of contracting a bloodborne disease as a result of a staff member failing to adhere to correct sterilizing measures during reprocessing.

While this was embarrassing, to say the least, embarrassment aside, this breach could lead to more significant consequences, such as the possibility of a patient contracting a life-threatening disease from an otherwise routine dental procedure.