Certol International

The Faces of Infection Control:
Paying Tribute to Important Work Behind the Scenes

Dental treatment is based on trust.

The patient arrives at the dental office, sits in the treatment chair, opens wide upon request and places trust in the dental team. The dentist picks up instruments trusting that all items are clean, sterile and in the best condition for the procedure. The dental assistant uses equipment and chemicals to clean and sterilize instruments; trusting in their quality and efficacy.

Alissa has a background very common among thousands of hard-working dental assistants. She was a regular patient in Dr. Sheila Brown’s practice and was recruited to join the dental staff based on her past work history as a certified nurse assistant. Trained on the job, Alissa quickly became a dependable and valued member of the office team.

Many dentists prefer dental assistants trained “on the job” as they are loyal and effective team members. But one aspect of this type of training may be weak – expertise in infection control guidelines and best practices. Alissa understands the importance of this knowledge from her work as a nurse assistant. She talks to local dental assisting educators and dental supply sales representatives to find the resources and training materials she and her co-workers need to have a great infection control program.

Our first goal at Certol is to earn the trust of our clinical end-users by developing and manufacturing disinfectants, detergents and other infection control products to reliably high standards. Certol also encourages our dental distributors, educational institutions and other dental industry partners to help dental assistants like Alissa find accurate objective infection control information.

Here are a few low cost or free resources:
The Certol website at http://www.certol.com/ offers technical tip sheets and FAQs based on CDC Guidelines; the American Dental Association offers fill-in-the-blank OSHA compliance kits at a moderate cost (http://www.ada.org/ ); and the non-profit group OSAP, Organization for Safety and Asepsis Procedures, at http://www.osap.org/ offers free on-line training, low cost training videos, and a low cost membership for access to even more great resources.