Special Requirements for Dental Practices
The CQC will assess all dentists practices against the standards at regular intervals. These standards listed below are applicable to all dental organisations involved with delivering direct patient care.
- Standard 2 (1.2.8) Hand Hygiene Training
- Standard 3 (1.3.6) Inoculation Incident Training
- Standard 3 (1.2.7) Medical Devices Training
- Standard 3 (1.3.7) Maintenance of Reusable Medical Devices and Equipment
- Standard 4 (1.4.9) Infection Prevention and Control Training
The Health Technical Memorandum has been produced to raise the quality of decontamination work in dental services and to meet the requirements of the Health Act 2006 and the Standards for Better Health.
It addresses the level of effectiveness of decontamination that is required to prevent the prion transmission through protein contamination of dental instruments, which research studies has indicated is present in dental tissue and prevent the transmission of variant Creutzfeldt –Jacob disease (vCJD).
This guidance makes clear the measures that practices must have in place to the requirements and adhering to these measures will ensure that instruments are sterile at the end of the decontamination process.
Best Practice also emphasises the importance of the environment in which decontamination is carried out and the need to validate each step in the decontamination process.