This month, Decon Pete discusses why keeping on top of IPC and decontamination is crucial for yourself and your practice.
As a core CPD subject, decontamination and infection prevention and control is an area that is always at the forefront of the minds of decontamination leads and the entire dental team.
In addition, every practice has a duty of care to ensure that those responsible remain up to date with regulations and to make sure their practice is compliant.
The GDC outlines that all members of the dental team must complete five hours of verifiable CPD in every five year CPD cycle. I would suggest that one hour is completed every year to help keep you on track with these requirements.
There are many roles that the dental staff will repeat day in, day out and we can become very automated and robotic in how we do things. ‘It’s the way we have always done it’ is something that I hear all the time. But just because it’s the way it has always been done, doesn’t necessarily make it the right or safest way.
The world of IPC is always changing, with the advent of new clinical research, regulatory changes, new risks etc contributing to this. Keeping on top of everything is extremely important in ensuring that all members of the team are kept safe and risk free.
The way that this is completed, whether online or in-person, is entirely down to the individual.
Online courses
Online courses are a great way of receiving the necessary training at a time that is convenient to you and can also be extremely cost effective. It does, in my opinion, have a couple of drawbacks, however:
- The course is only relevant providing the information has been kept up to date and outlines the newest relevant guidance
- It doesn’t provide the individual the ability to ask questions or obtain clarification on anything
- The training can be skipped/fast forwarded to speed things up, impacting the level of information taken in.
Even with some drawbacks, online training resources are beneficial in feeding our knowledge and providing us with an educational outlet that we can fit easily into our busy lives.
In-person training
In-practice training is something that can be used in conjunction with online learning. There are also a lot of benefits of having IPC and decontamination training, along with other courses, carried out in your practice.
- Many of these courses, from good providers, can be tailored to your individual practice needs and requirements
- As these are in-person courses, you are pretty much guaranteed that the information you receive is the most up to date
- They offer all staff a safe space to ask any question or obtain full clarification of anything that you are unsure about
- Many courses will encompass a mixture of practical and class room training
- It’s a great way at getting the whole team together
- It’s also a great way at ensuring that everyone is ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’.
If you have never had in-practice training before, I would encourage you to explore it for these reasons. Once you have located a provider, I would then encourage you to speak to them and ascertain a full understanding of what it is that they are covering.
In addition, if there are things that you want them to focus on, always speak to them. If they are a good provider, they should be able to accommodate this for the benefit of everyone.
We offer a selection of in-practice and online training courses,which can all be tailored to your practice. If you have any questions or to view any of the services that I offer, please either email me on [email protected] or visit the website www.deconpete.co.uk.
Catch up on previous Decon Pete columns:
- Are you managing your waste properly?
- How to avoid mistakes when loading your steriliser
- Answering your IPC and decontamination FAQs
- Answering the biggest decontamination questions – part two
- Answering the biggest decontamination questions – part one.
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