It is exciting to see the Dental Board of Australia (DBA) shifting from formal guidelines on infection control to supporting practitioners with resources and tools to help them continue practising safely.
The promotion of practitioner self-reflection and ongoing professionalism recognises the skill, training, and ability for practitioners to safely manage all risks related to the care of their patients and this includes how Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) is managed from one practice or setting to another.
The biggest mindset shift with the new DBA approach is for practitioners to have confidence to justify their own rationale for how and why they strategically manage IPC risk within their business models. This provides additional flexibility for practitioners.
In straightforward terms, a business model is simply: how you plan to make money. Working with thousands of dentists, I can assure you, this plan varies a lot from one practitioner to another – even for general dentistry.
This is why the strategic direction of a dental practice’s business model absolutely impacts the management of IPC risk within the day-to-day operations of a practice.
If your strategic approach is to see a high volume of patients for orthodontic treatments – you will need a lot of examination packs, or multiple sterilisers, a robust environmental cleaning program to respond to more patients in waiting rooms, a bigger team, and more resources such as consumables compared to a practice that has longer and fewer appointments.
If your business model is to provide fly-in-fly-out general dental care once or twice a month somewhere hot and dusty, how your stock is stored and how dental unit water lines are maintained would require IPC risk consideration that would differ to a custom-built practice in the city that operates five days a week and is always air-conditioned.
Context is also a factor for managing IPC risk. Providing care in a Residential Aged Care Facility where the patient is in their own home is different to a practice setting where you are in control of the environment from one patient to the next.
This is the key to Standard Precautions – the application of basic IPC strategies that reflect the context of the provision of care to minimise the risk of transmission of infectious agents from person to person, even in high-risk situations.
There is so much opportunity to create confident and efficient practice teams by understanding how you are already managing IPC risk. See you in October.
Kylie Robb will be presenting her full day IPC course at ADA WA House on Thu 27 Oct 2022 – get in quick to secure your spot. QR Code (or whatever you use to make it easy to register)
Kylie is a Fellow and Board Director of ACIPC with post graduate qualifications in IPC and Health Services Management. Kylie presents on IPC leadership, quality improvement, clinical governance, and dental practice sustainability and was recognised by the WHO for her dental IPC expertise and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America through her appointment onto their International Ambassadors Program.
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By ADA NSW Head of Practice Services, Kylie Robb
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