Best Practice Instructional Strategy

¶ … Rationalism Politics Impacts Public's View

Web Article Review

The principle best-practice strategy elucidated within Louis DePaola's article entitled "Infection control in the dental office" is for practitioners to adhere to sanitary and hygiene mandates as noted within a pair of documents produced by the Centers for Disease Control. The first document is the Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care (which was published in 2011), and the companion Infection Prevention Checklist for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care. These documents have a number of specific measures for those working in dental offices to follow to reduce the incidence of healthcare associated infections (HAI).

In addition to denoting several of the key guidelines for practitioners to adhere to in order to ensure safety and reduce the rate of infection transmission, the author also reinforces several key facets of this literature that apply to dental office workers. One of these is the fact that the aforementioned literature was written for a variety of dental settings, and that adherents should apply the information within them to their respective settings (DePaola, 2012, p. 14). Also, it is noteworthy to consider the fact that the best practices outlined within the literature need to be complied with by all personnel all of the time (with each individual patient), and that a failure to do so compromises the risk of everyone who enters the practice. Finally, there are certain contingencies identified within this article for compliance failure, which include a host of corrective measures as well as sufficient warnings and contact of centers for the control of infections (De Paola, 2012, p. 14). All of the guidelines explicated within these two pieces of literature are based on empirical evidence, and should be followed as the minimum level of precautions taken.

Application to Dental Assisting Training Curriculum

I am training to become an employee in the dental profession. As such, the number one point of value in DePaola's article is emphasizing the repercussions of failing to adhere to the Center of Disease Control's regulations regarding sanitation and infection-prevention. In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of HAI incidents that is maligning dentistry works. What I found to be truly revealing in this article, and somewhat unfathomable in today's age of advanced technology, is that, "1.7 million HAIs occur each year, and HAIs contribute to 99,000 patient deaths annually. HAIs kill more people than Aids, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined…the costs…are estimated to be between $28 and $45 billion" (De Paola, 2012, p. 2). This sort of prodigious waste -- of life, of money -- for highly preventable conditions and infections is disgusting, and emphasizes the fact that the measures advocated by the Center for Disease Control must be implemented for dental practitioners.

Moreover, the degree of specificity in the guidelines issues in the aforementioned two documents leaves little room for ambiguity regarding how to properly implement them, which is of immense value for my dental assistant training curriculum. The article provides a comprehensive overview of the changing (and ever increasingly strident) mandates for dental office sanitation since 1986. In covering these guidelines, the article also provides intimate details for procedures specifically related to dentistry as well as those utilitarian to health and healthcare institutions in general, such as the warnings and instructions related to breathing and coughing (DePaola, 2012, p. 8). As such, students are able to gain valuable insight into practices related to dentistry as well as to overall healthcare that, when failed to be properly accounted for, can contribute to the rate of incidence of HAIs.

Lesson Plan

Objective: To teach students the value of and proper etiquette for performing hand hygiene in dental settings.

Materials: Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care, and the companion Infection Prevention Checklist for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care. Both of these documents are available online, and can be printed out for expedient access.

Initial Lecture: This particular lesson plan will begin by emphasizing to students the noxious effects, and the exceedingly high rate of transmissions of HAIs. Although HAIs do not occur solely in dental environments, they may be reduced substantially by adequately counteracting them in dental settings. Salient facts to reinforce the austerity of this particular subject can be found in DePaola's article concerning the fiscal ramifications, the rate of incidence, and the deadliness of HAIs both in the developed and the developing war.

Next, it is important to denote the link between hand sanitation and this rate of incidence for HAIs. Not all infections are transmitted from hands and from a dearth of proper hand hygiene; however, infection rates can be considerably minimized by the proper management of hand hygiene. Moreover, hand hygiene is a fairly easy practice to master, provided it is utilized at the appropriate times.

Then, the pedagogue should instruct students as to the relationship between hand sanitation and particular types of infections. Again, its relationship to infections in general is a formidable obstacle to overcoming HAIs, yet it has a direct and empirically proven relationship to respiratory infections, particularly influenza and the common cold during every season except for the summer. Students should realize that close contact -- that which occurs within three feet (DePaola, 2012, p. 9) -- with patients results in the transmission of these types of diseases, which makes dental professionals particularly vulnerable to them.

At this point in the lesson it is necessary to produce and go over Table 2 in Guide to Infection Prevention for Outpatient Settings: Minimum Expectations for Safe Care, which details guidelines for eschewing respiratory infections. Although this document details a range of measures -- including covering both the mouth and the nose when sneezing or coughing, with a tissue, prior to rapidly discarding it -- and deferring "elective dental care on anyone presenting a fever, not related to oral/dental infection" (DePaola, 2012, p. 9), the emphasis should be on the guidelines referring to hand hygiene.