Usk-based Audere Medical Services says NHS and private dentists have been contacting it in numbers recently to advise and assist them in implementing the necessary processes and procedures to comply with the Essential Quality Requirements and Best Practice criteria of the recently introduced Department of Health Health Technical Memorandum 01-05.
Historically, the company says, the dental profession has not been required to adhere to the same strict standards of infection and decontamination control as other sectors of the healthcare industry, with manual decontamination processes not monitored, and instrument traceability “poor”. Audere said: “HTM 01-05 will raise dental infection control standards. One of the most demanding challenges that clinics will face to comply with HTM 01-05 is the requirement to properly sterilise all instruments and procedure equipment after all surgical procedures.” Working with dental practices, Audere’s engineers and technicians are servicing, validating, and upgrading, existing equipment to the required HTM01-05 standards, recommending suitable new or replacement equipment (photo shows a B-type bench-top autoclave of the type dentists will be required to use to comply), and training dental staff.
