Ensuring your dental practice is completely disinfected and clean is of paramount importance, especially in the current climate. With billions of bacteria passing through your dental equipment from just one single patient, ensuring you have regular cleaning schedules for every part of your practice is vital.

The cleaning and maintenance of your dental clinic can be time consuming. So ensuring you have great processes, supported by the best equipment, will help you adhere to cleaning standards and regulations, whilst also minimising the time you spend cleaning and repairing. We’ve tried to minimise the stress with this this handy guide for cleaning your dental practice, to eradicate germ contamination and ensure you provide a welcome and safe environment for all of your patients.

Dental Cleaning and Maintenance Checklist

From disinfecting reusable equipment to inspecting the X-ray equipment, our checklist takes an in-depth look at the key parts of a dental office that should be cleaned and maintained.

Daily

  • Reusable equipment – The standard examination equipment that a dentist uses for each patient will need to be thoroughly disinfected between uses. Whilst this can be done manually, for a truly thorough clean using high temperatures, use a Washer Disinfector. Our Deko D25 is perfectly suited for Dentists, with its compact design and outstanding cleaning capability. Washer disinfectors are able to clean instruments at high temperatures, whilst also saving time over manual cleaning.
  • Flush water – To ensure pipes are not clogged, flush water through handpieces, water syringes, air syringes and the handpiece waterlines.
  • Lubricate – Another well used instrument is the dental nose cone, used for polishing client’s teeth. This will need lubricating, as will other equipment such as prophy angles and contra angle.
  • Delivery Unit Traps – It’s important to clean out the delivery unit traps thoroughly

Weekly
As well as the daily (or sometimes between patient) tasks, there are a number of maintenance tasks that should be carried out on a weekly basis. These include:

  • Checking and replacing the O-rings on handpieces
  • Performing a safety check with the team to identify and resolve and new issues
  • Change the traps on the delivery units
  • Check and replace where necessary the handpiece gaskets

Monthly

To ensure your equipment continues to operate efficiently, its important to ensure you also carry out some more in-depth checks on a monthly basis. These tasks include:

Inspecting the master trap. Does it need a thorough clean? Or does it need replacing completely.

  • Clean the model trimmer
  • Inspect the plaster trap. Does this require a deeper clean or even replacement.
  • Nitrous oxide is vital for any dentist. Its therefore important to check the systems as well as the emergency oxygen units to ensure there is no damage and they are functioning correctly.
  • Check all technical equipment, such as patient monitoring systems to ensure everything is up to scratch.

Annually

Finally, there are some larger tasks that, though important, are only required once a year. These include

  • Inspecting fire equipment. Ensure that your smoke alarm, emergency exists and fire extinguishers are accessible and fit for purpose.
  • Organise and inspection and certification of your x-ray equipment
  • Change the gasket and cassette seals on your sterilizer door.
  • Change the oil in the compressor
  • Review the safety procedures that you have in place with your staff. We recommend that every new staff member has a full safety, cleaning and maintenance induction when they join your team. However, things slip and people forget procedures, so its worthwhile having an annual refresh for the whole team.

Final Thoughts

Whilst there is a lot to do when it comes to maintenance and cleaning, there is some good news. By choosing a washer disinfector, you can reduce the time you spend cleaning reusable equipment, as well as increasing cleaning effectiveness.

What’s more, you need not worry about the maintenance and servicing of the washer disinfector. With our class-leading maintenance packages, a Dekomed technician will visit you to carry out detailed inspections of your washer disinfector. This ensures that it operates at full strength, minimising downtime. Just one less thing to think about!

 

By following this list, and utilising the support available to you for washer disinfectors, you’ll be able to provide a clean, safe environment for your patients that helps you adhere to regulations and keep customers coming back for their check-ups and procedures.