5 ways to maintain your dental instruments
1. Quality materials and routine checks
Start by choosing instruments made of high-quality materials. This will ensure their durability and performance, contributing to excellent results.
Regular maintenance checks of your dental instruments can reduce unexpected signs of wear and enable you to act promptly when replacements are needed. Nominate a staff member to carry out this task and encourage them to become chempions of instrument maintenance among colleagues.
Periodically inspect and service the machines you use for instrument reprocessing. No machine downtime means smooth workflows for the whole practice and no need for emergency reprocessing methods such as manual washing, which could damage your instruments and not reach the desired levels of cleanliness before proceeding to sterilization.
2. Proper handling and storage
Wear gloves when handling instruments to reduce the risk of cross-contamination and ensure that they remain sterile after they are reprocessed.
Choose proper systems to organize equipment during and after reprocessing. Trays with dedicated holders such as Miele’s E337/1 avoid friction between instruments while they are machine-washed, preserving their sharpness. Some trays like the ones in the EasyStore System are combined with containers that allow placing such instrument trays inside sterilizers straight after washing, without any manual handling in between. After sterilization, these containers can be orderly stacked to store instruments until they are used next.
By eliminating manual handling in between reprocessing phases, these systems ensure the maximum levels of hygiene while also protecting your instruments from damage and ensuring health and safety for your staff.
3. Correct reprocessing
Choose the right method and equipment to reprocess your instruments.
Before sterilization takes place, it is recommended that you wash and disinfect your instruments. The most efficient disinfection procedures are aided by thermal disinfectors. With dedicated programmes, as well as inserts and injectors especially designed to clean dental instruments, these machines reach the highest levels of hygiene while treating your instruments gently.
Thermal disinfectors are also equipped with sensors that automatically check the water pressure, temperatures and chemical dosage. This ensures that the strain on your instruments is minimised.
There is no such thing as too little or too high a number of instruments reprocessed each day when it comes to choosing a thermal disinfector. Whether you treat a handful or hundreds of patients daily, there are options for you. At Miele Professional, we are especially proud of having developed the most comprehensive range of thermal disinfectors, including benchtop, undercounter, and large-chamber ones.
4. Training and professional development
The correct handling and maintenance of instruments cannot be entrusted to a selected number of staff: it must be a collective effort to ensure that the whole practice runs smoothly.
Creating a culture of instrument care across your practice will: 1. avoid mishandling and procedural errors, lengthening the life of your instruments; 2. ensure standardized procedures, contributing to procedural reliability; 3. prevent accidents while handling instruments.
5. Integrating smart technology
Many providers offer digital solutions to optimise instrument reprocessing. These give access to a wealth of data on wash cycles, enabling better inventory management of instruments and accessories.
Miele MOVE Connect is our digital solution for machine data and programme management. As well as offering insights into utility usage and cycle performance and alerting users when a fault occurs, Miele MOVE Connect allows an analysis of each stage of the reprocessing cycle in thermal disinfectors. This can be a precious tool to devise strategies to achieve safe results in instrument care and inventory management, for example by providing full traceability on the cycles run by the machine, the temperature reached.
360PRO solutions for your dental practice
By adhering to simple guidelines and best practices, dental professionals can ensure the reliability, longevity, and safety of their instruments, ultimately enhancing the quality of patient care and practice operations.
Still looking for the right solution for your practice? With 360PRO from Miele Professional, not only your reprocessing room is well equipped. We also offer you the right solutions for laundry and crockery in your practice staff room. For more information about how we can support your dental practice, head over to our 360PRO Dental landing page.
- 1.https://dentistry.co.uk/2022/05/12/best-practice-for-the-best-tools/
- 2.https://dntlworks.com/blogs/news/5-tips-for-proper-maintenance-of-dental-equipment