Maintaining Asepsis is a big deal when it comes to preventing infection, for

both you and your patient in the dental office. In hygiene school we learn how to

properly wash our hands, wear PPE, and properly set up our units. This starts in

our first semester and continues all throughout school and will remain throughout

our careers as well.

Infection control is so important in the medical field! You don’t want to

accidentally spread something contagious to your patient or yourself. That’s why

the use of gloves, masks, googles, and face shields are vital. We also wear reusable

gowns to help protect our scrubs.

When setting up our units, we learn what things you can and can’t touch

with gloves on. You learn how and where to put up the blue barriers in your

operatory, this is essentially anywhere you could need to touch inside your

operatory, like the light, keyboard, mouse, and your chair. Then you learn to utilize

the over glove if you need to get in your drawer, or you can take your gloves off.

Running your units water lines is also important, this allows you to flush the

bacteria out of the lines at the start and end of the day; at the start you flush it for 2

minutes and 30 seconds in between patients and at the end of day.

The above skills that I learned will help keep my patients and myself safe

throughout my time as a dental hygienist.