Back to basics

All dental professionals today should be very familiar with HTM 01-05. First published in 2008 these guidelines have the principle aim of making the dental practice a safe and clean working environment to protect both patients and staff alike. However, although most DCPs know they must follow these protocols, do they really understand why they need to? There is a constant balancing act of trying to achieve what HTM 01-05 is saying must be done and what the practice is actually trying to do on a daily basis. So, we need to know why we are being asked to incorporate certain processes , understand the risks and learn how to deal with them.

The basic route of infection within a practice is similar to lighting a fire. A fire needs three things in order to burn; oxygen, fuel and an ignition source. Take away any one of these and the fire will go out. Similarly, the spread of infection starts with an infective agent, which on its own is not a risk, unless it is able to infect a target. The target is the patient or member of staff and so the third key part is the route of infection, which can take a number of different directions. It is not possible to eliminate the target for obvious reasons, but there are many ways of removing infective agents and preventing their spread with the use of rigorous infection control procedures and correct cleaning agents.