Patient Safeguards

Ness Bank Dental Practice takes your safety very seriously.

Full written Risk Assessments have been carried out examining all aspects of the Practice's operation as a fundamental part of the British Dental Association's Good Practice Award. The practice is the first recipient of that award in the the Scottish Highlands.

General hazards such as fire are dealt with by those Risk Assessments and the staff are fully trained and the practice is fully equipped to deal with any events which might occur. All staff members regularly update their training in the management of medical emergencies as part of their annual CPD Accreditation.For your own protection, as a new patient you will be asked to fill in a confidential medical history which will be checked at subsequent visits.

The practice has passed several inspections by both the Highland Primary Care Trust and the West of Scotland Centre for Postgraduate Dental Education. Dr Cliff is currently one of the team of approved Practice Inspectors working in the Highland area although he is obviously barred from carrying out formal inspections at Ness Bank.

Specifically, the practice has a dedicated sterile instrument preparation area. No clinical instrument is re-used without adequate cleaning and sterilisation. If an instrument can not be adequately cleaned and sterilised before re-use it is discarded and incinerated.

All instruments for re-use are inspected and physically cleaned. They are then cleaned in high power ultrasonic baths to ensure that they are totally physically clean. Our ultrasonic cleaners are checked daily by foil ablation tests to confirm their correct operation.

Instruments are sterilised in individual containers using one of our two steam autoclaves. Both autoclaves are regularly serviced and calibrated by Eschman, the manufacturers. Each autoclave is digitally controlled and gives a printed output which displays the temperature and pressure conditions for every load and every autoclave cycle. We check the calibration of each autoclave twice daily and as a final safeguard we include a test strip in every pack of instruments that we sterilise which changes colour and gives an immediate visual indication to your dentist that the instruments have been properly prepared.

Additionally, the water which passes through our instruments is specially bacteriologically treated to ensure that it is free from bio-film from water lines and potentially infective organisms. We run periodic bacteriological surveys to check the cleanliness of our water sytems.

Clinical personnel work gloved (we have nitrile alternatives for patients with latex allergies) and with face masks. Intra oral suction systems are vented outside the building to avoid creating infective aerosols in the treatment rooms.