Please find below the Facebook live video that is 10-15 minutes long about what we are doing at the office to improve safety for your children. Under the video is the transcript if you would rather read than watch. Thanks for visiting our site! Please call us if you have any questions or concerns about the content shared or your child’s dental needs.
Good afternoon Facebook fans! My name is Dr. Joye Warr and I am coming to you. I am a pediatric dentist from High Point, North Carolina. I’m here to answer questions about your kid’s teeth. Today we’re going to do a little something a little bit different, and it’s not going to be about teeth. It’s going to be about how we care about our surroundings and things like that, because I know there’s a lot of stuff going on. I want to thank you for joining me. I hope y’all had a wonderful afternoon.
Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about how we make sure that your children are safe at our office. You know, with all the talk about the Coronavirus, and all that kind of thing. I want to make sure that I outline for you exactly how we’re doing to make sure that your children are safe. You know, children carry a lot of germs. We want to make sure that you understand that.
Before I do that, I want to tell you a little story. When I was in film school, there was an elderly gentleman that came up to me and he said, “You know, I don’t understand how you can make sure that I don’t catch the next person’s germs.” I said, “Well, what do you mean?” He said, “Well, you work on one person, then you take those instruments and the lady goes outside of the room. Then the next person comes in and she pulls those instruments in, then she goes.” I said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that’s not it.” That’s the moment that I realized that many people don’t understand what we call sterilization techniques. I was able to explain to this gentleman, how we make sure that we use what we call the autoclave, different things, alcohol, sanitizers, Kava side, and all that kind of thing.
As for today, I want to kind of go over that with you. Now, the first layer that we have, is that we make sure that every child has their own instruments. In other words, we don’t share instruments between kids. Now, the elderly gentleman in my story, he said, “but those instruments are the same ones that you just used.” I said, “No, no, no, no, no, we have many instruments.” Remember, many dental offices, have a whole bunch of mirrors, a whole bunch of instruments, and a whole bunch of things that we use. We don’t use just one set for like one person and then use the same set for another person. We have a whole bunch of sets.
The other thing that you should know is that we sterilize those instruments. We use a sterilizer, called an autoclave. Again, this applies to most dental offices. We have an autoclave and what does the autoclave do? It uses both extreme heat and extreme pressure and time to kill any germs that you may have so that the next person that uses those instruments won’t get infected with those instruments. So ,all of those things, makes sure we don’t use the same one between patients when it comes to instruments.
The other thing you should know about when we do have your child in the chair, there are plenty of what we call disposables, which means those are things that we only use one time. Like the little suction straw, the little straw, we only use that one time, we don’t use that multiple times. The little cotton gauze, of course, we only use that one time. Even if it’s out on the table, we’re not allowed to kind of put it back. If it’s out on the table while your child is there, then we throw that entire whatever your child could have even breathed on, or what the last child could have even breathed on, in the garbage. Any paper products or anything. Even if we don’t use them, they go into the garbage. So these are disposables.
The other thing you should know is that we also use what we call barriers. Now barriers are like plastic bags that go over the various furniture fixtures or The X ray machine, things that we may not be able to sterilize to the point where we’re sure that no germs can penetrate. We use barriers over different things. We use barriers over some of our things that we use in your mouth and we use various over the headdress and things like that to make sure that the next child doesn’t get infected.
The last thing we do is that we use what we call personal protection equipment. Those are the gloves, the mask, and the glasses. The coats that we use, make sure that, let’s say if we’re using something and water splashes on our hands or on in our eyes, or on our jackets, we use those shields or that personal protection equipment. To make sure that we don’t pass anything on to the next child. Gloves and masks are something that’s almost universal now, not just because of the coronavirus, but you can find parking attendants or toll booth attendants who use gloves and masks sometimes. We use those and that’s something that we know that stops the spread of germs. With the advent of the coronavirus, or any type of virus or any type of flu virus or anything like that, we also go one extra step. It’s not just because of the Coronavirus but because of everything else that just kids do. We also every day and sometimes two and three times a day we wipe down any of the toys. Those are the things that the kids play with the hands, and things like that. You use Lysol wipes, we use different kinds of wipes to which are a little bit stronger and a little bit more stringent to wipe down areas where we think that the kids may have sneezed or anything like that. We use that to make sure that your child doesn’t get any of the viruses or anything, nothing that they put contact or anything like that.
The last thing that we do is that we wash our hands. So between each patient, we wash our hands with either a hand sanitizer, alcohol based hand sanitizer, or we use a antibacterial soap, which kind of wears on our hands, but we use those things to make sure that we’re not passing germs back and forth.
Now, I know that the coronavirus is a very new thing and so we’re not exactly sure how that virus is going to interact, and we wish everyone well with that. But I want to guarantee you I want to make sure that you understand that dental offices are way ahead of the curve. We’re doing a lot of things that some other places may not be doing. Your dental office is probably doing the best and doing over and above. And I hope this little talk, kind of clear some of the things so that you can be assured that we’re making sure that we keep your children safe.
Now, there’s a couple of things that I’m excited about, that are coming up, just at our office. Remember, the tooth warrior is on and she is waiting to talk to your daycare. If you have a school group or someone, she’s waiting to talk to your kids, and she loves it. We love it too! Her energy is contagious and she has the five rules, for healthy teeth, so you don’t want to miss that. Give us a call, send us an email if you would like for the tooth warrior to come to your school, or your health fair or something, just so we can spread the word about how to have healthy teeth.
The other thing that we’re really excited about is all the tests, all the Facebook family, all the contests, and all the Facebook family that have supported us this year, we want to say a special thank you to everyone who liked us on Facebook. To everyone who’s watched our Facebook, live feeds, we want to make sure that this is helpful for you. We also want you to continue to share those things. If you have some information or you have a friend who has a question about teeth or something like that, let us know. We’ll be glad to answer those questions for you. We hope that this has been helpful. Again, I want to say hey Facebook, Facebook fans. Thanks for joining us.