Infection Prevention and Control of Infectious Disease

Screening Before Check-in

Aside from the covid-19 pandemic, our dental center has always tracked  world-wide pandemic outbreaks such as MERs, SARs or other contagious diseases as part of our infection prevention and control routine. 

Before providing for your dental appointment, we requests that our patients are in good health. During pandemic outbreak periods, if you have been detected to have travelled to infected areas and are ill or do not feel well, your registered nurse may recommend you to delay or post-phone your appointment until you are in good health.

For advance appointments, our customer care will try to arrange patients at separate phase out intervals to enable safe patient numbers within our dental center for social distancing throughout the day. BIDC develops and carry out process flow on the early detection and management of potentially infectious patients at initial points of entry. 

Instructions on Infection Control Etiquette

On arrival at our entrance, our nurses will take your temperature. If respiratory illness or any risk base symptoms are found, you will be requested to wait in an separate area  for further assessment in determining to proceed with your dental visit or delaying your treatment. Your nurse may provide you with masks and advice on infection control etiquette for hand hygiene, and social distancing whilst waiting during your visit. 

High-powered air-purifiers are kept turned on at waiting areas and there are hand sanitizer gels dotted at various touch point counters, lifts and public lobby areas for your use at BIDC dental clinic.

Use of Standard Precautions 

At BIDC dental center, standard precautions on hand hygiene, use of personal protective wear and equipment (gloves, masks, eyewear),  respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette, sharps and safe safety practices, sterile instruments and devices, clean and disinfected environmental surfaces is part of our routine sterilization process, policies and practices.

Standard precautions refers to the above minimum infection prevention practices that apply to all patient care, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status of the patient, in any health care setting. Being JCI accredited, BIDC is audited on the quality, treatment and infection process controls. We continually educate, refresh and already train our dental care providers (dentists and staff) to comply with the critical elements of standard precautions protocols. When standard precautions alone cannot prevent transmission of infectious diseases, transmission-based precautions are taken. This second tier of infection prevention is used when patients have diseases that may or can spread through contact, droplet or airborne routes.

Use of Transmission-Based Precautions 

Your normal dental clinics are not typically not designed for transmission-based precautions. At BIDC dental center,  we place resource and are able to carry out airborne precautions for patients with suspected infectious diseases (such as coronavirus, tuberculosis, measles, or chickenpox) using JCI ambulatory care guidelines.

Should any risk based patients on possible contagious disease be identified, transmission-based precautions are applied. Patients are treated separately in designated treatment rooms and separate waiting areas apart of other patients. Full personal protective equipment (PPE) including disposal gown, N95 masks and face-shield are worn and properly discarded before exiting the treatment room. As much as possible, BIDC use disposable or dedicated patient-care equipment for all our dental treatments.

Cleaning and disinfection of these specific designated treatment room is additional prioritized after each use or set at the end of the day. The designated treatment room is meant only for transmission-based precautions and separate from other patients treatment rooms and levels. Your dentist changes rooms in between patients so that the prior used treatment room can be thoroughly disinfected and sterilized.

Treatment Room Ventilation

BIDC is a one-stop dental building, our dental building is designed for dentistry whereby ventilation vents and airflow design has been taken into consideration during the planning and design of our dental center. Each treatment room has fitted air suction vents that removes airborne contaminants. Your dentist inter-change treatment rooms after each patient to enable disinfection of used treatment room and settling of any airborne droplets. 

Additional Oral Suction Equipment

Aside from high powered suction equipment internally installed on dental chair units used routinely in dental treatments. BIDC takes further steps for additional external intra-oral suction unit to remove and reduce aerosol spread into the air for specific aerosol based dental treatments. 

Clinical Technique During Treatment

Pre-procedural mouth rinse with may be requested as additional preventive measures. We use European designed dental unit that are equiped with high-powered suction units that draws away any body secretion and vapours. 

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Your dentist and dental assistants are trained in proper technique on donning and doffing of masks, respirators and gowns. Standard basic PPE used for standard precautions include gloves, surgical masks and eyewear. Additional protective devices for transmission-base precuations include higher-grade masks (such as N95 masks), face shielf and disposable gowns.

Ultra-violet (UV) Pulse Light

An additional step to kill off virus in the airbourne and on surfaces added to our cleaning and disinfection flow of treatment room is the use of  Ultra-violet (UV) Pulse Light. After each use, treatment rooms are sterilized additionally with UV light.

Disinfection in-between patients

Our treatment rooms are cleaned and disinfected after each use with approved anti-viral disinfectants. Our infection prevention and control team vets through hand gels, cleaning disinfectants, laundry detergents on its components and ingredients as well as its percentage concentration before each brand of cleaning agent is used within our sterilization rooms, treatment room or public areas. This ensures that proper and correct controls are used for its various purpose. There are spill-kits and  eye-wash station for housekeeping staff on safe removal of hazardous substances or chemicals.

Disposal one-time use patient items are used as much as possible during your dental treatment. Any reused fabrics and items are pre-selected for its anti-bacterial properties. Even our selected sourced dental units are chosen for its easy on sterilization design or disinfection surface materials.

Daily Cleaning and Disinfection of Environment

Public spaces are cleaned are regular intervals. This include door handles, desks, elevators and bathrooms using hospital-grade approved cleaners. Disposed waste are separate into infectious and general waste bins and never mixed for proper discarding of infectious items.

At BIDC, our waiting areas, corridors and common areas are sprayed with high concentrate sanitizer every end of the day. This is as another additional step to get rid of any viruses and germs that may have remain on surfaces and airborne during daytime.

In order to prevent the spread of contagious diseases including flu and covid-19 between staff or to patients, vaccines and has a health check is done annually for all our staff. It is compulsory for our staff to undergo orientation and training every year on the aspect of infection prevention control for hand hygiene, basic life support (BLS), ethnics and patient safety policies amongst other courses. Staff and dentists are checked in complying with our treatment, quality and control standards following JCI guidelines. 

Your staff is therefore vigilance on patient safety and infection prevention. There are cleaning and disinfectant strategies for each department including housekeeping, dental assistances and registered nurses.