Blog Coburg Dental Group

Many of our patients looking for a safe dentist Essendon have asked this very question.

We now have over 18 months of experience to know that visiting the dentist is no riskier than being in the general community with respect to catching diseases such as COVID-19.  But having made that bold statement, we can reassure all of our patients and the community in general, that we take all of the precautions to ensure that Coburg Dental Group is a very safe place for our patients to visit, and for our staff to work.  And of-course, we are concerned that we don’t bring home the virus to our families and loved-ones.

So what are we doing to make sure that this is the case?

Firstly, anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19 must not attend our clinic.  That includes a runny nose, sneezing, cough, persistent headache, fever. Even if have a negative PCR test or rapid antigen test result, you should not attend, because we or our patients don’t want to catch your cold and then need to be tested ourselves and take time off from work or school.

When you attend our clinic, you must wear an approved, well-fitting mask covering the mouth and nose at all times except when you are actually receiving dental treatment.  We do not accept medical exemptions for mask wearing.  If you are too sick to wear a mask, then you are too sick to receive treatment in our clinic and should attend a tertiary hospital for your dental treatment.  Face shields and scarves are also not acceptable in our safe dentist Essendon clinic.  This applies to all attendees over the age of 12 years.

We enforce social distancing in our waiting area and reception area and for this reason, we request that adult patients come alone.  Children should always be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Hand sanitizer is provided for your convenience, next to the front entrance and is applied when you enter and leave the treatment room. In the treatment room, the patient will be given an anti-bacterial and anti-viral mouth rinse to use for 20 seconds.  This mouthwash kills 99% of the COVID-19 virus in your saliva and throat secretions.  This ensures that the aerosols which are generated by our drills and other equipment are free of any viral particles to prevent spread from patient to patient.

In addition, we ensure that all common areas are cleaned with detergent and disinfectant, 4 times a day and the treatment rooms are cleaned in between each patient.  All treatment surfaces which have the potential to be contaminated, are covered with disposable plastics and are replaced for each patient.

All of our treatment instruments are fully sterilized and packaged for sterile storage. Some of our instruments are single use and disposable but we try to limit these because they end up in our rubbish bins and then landfill.

It is our plan, that all of our staff will be double vaccinated for COVID-19 soon, and indeed, many of them are already.

If you have any questions or concerns about this, please don’t hesitate to call Dr Jeffrey Kestenberg on 9386 1805.