The elephant in the room?

As a dental professional, you need to walk a safe path, juggling patient safety with practice efficiency. Mark Beckwith discusses the need to be compliant with today's infection control

Sharps practice

Is your practice taking care of you?

When the headlines scream ‘Dental patients at risk’

The topic of infection control has drawn a bit of a media circus of late, thanks partly to a few newsworthy breaches in dental practices and the Zika virus. Here, Rebecca Waters asks if your standards are high enough

Don't be a fool!

This April, is your practice ready for new regulations?

Well-meaning but ill-judged?

Risk assessments in dentistry

As part of the Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, all employers are required to assess the risks to those in the workplace and any others who may be affected.

Infection prevention and control – the key to patient safety

Richard Griffith discusses the duties of dental care professionals (DCPs) to ensure patients benefit from proper infection prevention and control procedures, and highlights the sanctions that DCPs may face if they fail to discharge those duties

Changes to the Care Quality Commission regulations

In this article, Richard Harris describes what the Care Quality Commission regulations mean and what a practice might expect from an inspection under the new system

The CQC and safeguarding: the impact on dental nurses

Following new legislation, the Care Quality Commission published a statement on its roles and responsibilities for safeguarding children and adults in England. Dave Hancock considers the likely impact on dental nurses

Immunisations for the dental nurse

In this article, Shilla Talati discusses what immunisations are necessary for dental nurses or staff at the dental practice who will come into contact with blood or other bodily fluids

Questions and answers

In this section, we answer your questions on all issues relating to dental nursing. To submit a question, please email dn@markallengroup.com

Use of personal protective equipment in dental practices

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is designed to protect the person wearing it from pathogens and protects the patient from pathogens that could be picked up in dental practices. This article updates an article published in 2012, updating legislation on infection control and decontamination

Good infection control practice: protecting the patient

This article will examine environmental cleanliness, surface cleaning, hand hygiene and how we have a responsibility to ensure that all our staff, patients and visitors are confident that we are doing all we can to reduce health care-associated infections

Effective cleaning techniques to aid cross-infection control

Within the dental practice, there are many pathogens that can harm the patient, as well as the dental team. This article discusses effective cleaning techniques to ensure cross-infection control and decontamination procedures are carried out according to legislation and guidance

Managing patients' requests to keep teeth and plaster moulds

In this article, Richard Griffith outlines the legislation regulating the safe management and disposal of waste and considers how the law applies to retained teeth and plaster products