Dental equipment should be specifically engineered to help you and your team work more efficiently. The equipment you use should be reliable and hard-wearing, and it should also be backed by fully trained authorised individuals who offer support and after-care service for the life of your purchase. Great equipment teamed with knowledgeable sales, installation and after-care staff will help the dental team ‘plan for perfection’ when designing and working in the dental treatment environment. A little ‘out of the box’ thinking when re-equipping your surgery can go a long way in increasing productivity and making your working environment a more comfortable one.
According to experts in dental ergonomics one reason why dentists and nurses suffer from work related problems such as pain in the lower back, neck, shoulder, wrists or hands, is because the critical role of the assistant in four-handed dentistry is often overlooked when choosing equipment. For instance, if the nurse is not in charge of all the instrument transfers and the instruments are not within easy reach, true four-handed dentistry is not being practised. The result can be unnecessary physical strain being placed on the nurse and thereby the dentist as they struggle to cope with an inherently inefficient system.
To place the nurse more at the heart of the surgery, conventional surgery designs and traditional cabinetry layouts should be re-considered. For example, how about the option to include a cabinetry mounted ‘nurses console’ at the 12 o’clock position? In this position, with everything placed in front of the nurse, stressful movements are avoided.
Surgery design has stayed fairly constant in the last four decades and as a result, so has the management of materials. Over the same time the materials available for dentistry have increased significantly, are more costly and often have a shorter shelf life, and so how they are managed has become very important clinically and financially. For easier control of inventory and shelf life, consider the ‘procedure tub and tray’ system found in many US surgeries which enables materials and instruments to be kept in a central stores area. From central stores, all the materials required for a session are placed in tubs colour-coded by procedure: endodontic, composite restoration and so on, while the instruments are placed in trays or cassette systems. The tube and trays can then be placed in allocated shelves within specifically designed treatment consoles and are ready for dispensing in the surgery. Used tubs and trays can even be removed without entering the surgery, so reducing unnecessary interruptions to often complex treatment procedures.
Consider carefully:
1. Patient traffic. What is the best route from the reception area into the dental chair? Does the door hinge on the optimum side? Are there steps or ramps to encounter (disabled patients)?
2. Staff traffic. Are the materials and instruments stored in the optimum place to ensure the assistant does not need to leave the room during a procedure? Is the potentially noisy autoclave in the same room? Do other surgeries use the autoclave in your room?
3. Specialties. May these be carried out in this particular surgery? For instance, do you need to make space for an endodontic microscope?
4. Will the surgery be used by multiple operators therefore requiring more flexibility and the option for left and right handed users?
In these changing times of extended hours of opening, part-time associates to facilitate family life and more recently corporate bodies, the need for an ambidextrous, multiple user package has grown.
These key four points should be carefully considered but may be overlooked. They may have a major impact on the efficiency of the team, and more importantly the smooth transition between patients.
In addition consider how the equipment can measure up to the criteria contained within the recent HTM 01-05 and provide you with up-to-date and effective infection control management.
To help improve the quality of decontamination carried out within the dental practice, the health department has issued this guidance; Health Technical Memorandum (HTM) 01-05; Decontamination in primary care dental practices, and has produced a self-audit tool to complement the guidance and is involved in conducting a national survey of dental decontamination. The tub and tray system can play a key role here.
If you are thinking of re-equipping your surgery, perhaps consideration of the above points may prompt you to think differently in other areas too?
For more information call 024 7635 0901 or email info@a-dec.co.uk