Your comments are needed for new consultation
Consultation is underway on the Department of Health's consultation draft of HTM 01-05 on Decontamination in Primary Care Dental Facilities. Please note that this is not a public consultation, but rather a stakeholder consultation.
This document is a guide for those conducting decontamination at a local level – that is, within the dental practice itself. It is aimed at dentists and their staff, as well as engineers.
To help dental practices to improve their decontamination procedures, this document introduces specific benchmarks by which standards can be attained and measured, by way of essential quality requirements and best practice requirements.
The document is based on the idea of dental instruments being "sterilized" rather than being sterile at the point of use.
This document is divided into three sections:
Section 1: Decontamination policy and foreword.
This section outlines policy and principles of decontamination in dental practices, and explains the essential quality requirements and best practice requirements
Section 2: Advice to dentist and practice staff.
This section gives plain advice to dentist and practice staff on how to meet the essential quality requirements and best practice requirements; how to clean and sterilize instruments; and how to set up a decontamination area within the practice.
Section 3: Engineering, technology and standards.
This section gives technical advice to engineering and technical staff.
The content of the document is in accordance with the relevant British, European and International Standards, which are referenced within section 3 of the guidance.
It is important to remember that this is a working document; changes to it may be necessary as new evidence around the methodology of decontamination becomes available. Therefore it is envisaged that the document will be revised/updated on a regular basis.
The Department is seeking your comments and suggestions on the attached draft before it goes for publication.
It would be helpful if members could circulate the draft to relevant stakeholders within their own jurisdictions.
In order to provide appropriate feedback it would be helpful if you could respond to Alison McCree on alison.mccree@cddft.nhs.uk using the matrix attached by Wednesday 11th September 2008.
Related PDFs:
