Infection Control

CDA provides guidance for dentist-employers who must ensure their unlicensed dental assistants complete the dental board-approved eight hour infection control course per the new timeline.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2025, unlicensed dental assistants in California must complete the required eight-hour infection control course prior to exposure to blood and saliva.

Some cities and counties in California mandate that health care workers receive the flu and COVID-19 vaccine. A CDA resource summarizes local public health department orders.

A new safety needle is on the market and is now the fifth safety needle, or safety sharp, available to California dentists. Dental practices that do not use safety sharps should evaluate the NopoGuard as part of the Cal/OSHA-required documentation.

The California Department of Public Health on Sept. 17 ended the COVID-19 testing mandate for unvaccinated health care workers and other individuals in high-risk settings, which include dental offices.

The CDC has urged health care providers to be alert for patients who have rash illnesses consistent with monkeypox regardless of specific risk factors. Dentists are well-positioned to help detect the virus during patient examinations.

The risk of monkeypox transmission in dental practices is low, currently, but as health care providers, dentists and dental teams can take steps now to minimize the virus’s spread, including through appropriate screening of patients and employees.

To be compliant with Cal/OSHA standards, California dental practices are required to train any team member who may be exposed to bloodborne pathogens. CDA has resources available to support your practice in achieving compliance.

When performing or involved with aerosol-generating procedures (open suctioning of airways, sputum induction and others), dental health care personnel should continue to wear NIOSH-approved N95, N95-equivalent or higher-level respirators. 
 

Dentists have an ethical and legal obligation to do no harm and to protect the health of their patients. But what happens when their patients put others at risk? Such is the dilemma faced by some practice owners who have called The Dentists Insurance Company’s Risk Management Advice Line with questions regarding their obligation to treat unvaccinated patients. At the core of this dilemma is the return of a disease previously believed to have been eliminated: measles.

A new law to ensure proper irrigation and disinfection of exposed pulpal tissue went into effect Jan. 1 of this year. As explained in a December 2018 Update article, the law states that water and other methods used for irrigation when performing procedures on exposed dental pulp must be “sterile or contain recognized disinfecting or antibacterial properties.”

When performing procedures on exposed dental pulp, water or other methods used for irrigation must be “sterile or contain recognized disinfecting or antibacterial properties,” according to a new requirement that all licensed dentists in California must follow beginning Jan. 1, 2019.