Breaking the Chain: Mastering Infection Control Basics
Ensuring infection control compliance can be challenging for many practices.
From remaining current with regulations, providing proper team training, maintaining cleanliness and sterilization standards, including dental unit waterline maintenance, managing costs, and implementing effective communication and documentation processes, preventing exposure to pathogens is one of the most important and challenging tasks that dental professionals face.
However, noncompliance with dental infection control protocols is not an option and can have serious consequences: patient or team member infections, legal and financial consequences, and damage to reputation, leading to loss of patients and revenue.
Learning objectives:
1. Define infection prevention principles and recommendations for dental health care settings
2. Recognize how to prevent transmission of infectious agents through standard precautions, with a review of cross-contamination prevention, hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, and cough etiquette.
3. Employ standard operating procedures to remain in compliance with regulation, which includes PPE and practitioner safety, sharps safety, safe injection practices, and environmental controls.
4. Formulate a successful dental unit waterline protocol, including dental unit water quality and waterline testing.
5. Manage a successful infection control plan that includes sterilization of patient care items to prevent disease transmission.
Amanda Hill, BSDH, RDH, CDIPC
Amanda Hill, BSDH, RDH, CDIPC, is an enthusiastic speaker, innovative consultant, and award-winning author. A sought-after thought leader contributing invaluable and inspiring insights into the current trends in dentistry. She brings over 25 years of clinical dental hygiene and now enthusiastically educates the dental industry. Amanda has authored over one hundred articles and had the most-read article of 2020 in Dr. Bicuspid. Recipient of the Association for Dental Safety’s Emerging Infection Control Leader award, she is affectionately known as the Waterline Warrior. An active participant with the advisory board for RDH magazine, Dentistry IQ, and the ADS’s Infection Control In Practice Editorial Review Board and membership committee, Amanda strives to make topics in dentistry accurate, accessible, and fun!
Conflict of Interest Disclosure: Pro Edge Dental Water Labs, Air Techniques
- Courses by Amanda Hill:
- Friday9:00am-12:00pm, Course Code: F3, Breaking the Chain: Mastering Infection Control Basics
- Saturday1:00pm-3:00pm, Course Code: S6, Crashing the Biofilm Party: Understanding the path to safe dental unit waterlines