Dental practices need to balance the need to provide necessary services while minimizing risk to patients and dental healthcare personnel.
Clínica Dental Champsaur has reinforced a framework for dental framework, for personnel and healthcare systems, for the delivery of non-emergent dental care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our Dentists in Panama have applied the following measures following the recommendations of the MINSA and the Panamanian Dental Association.
Patient Management
• All patients to be contacted prior to dental treatment.
• Telephone screen all patients for symptoms consistent with COVID-19. If the patient reports symptoms of COVID-19, avoid non-emergent dental care. If possible, delay dental care until the patient has recovered
• Assess the patient’s dental condition and determine whether the patient needs to be seen in the dental setting
• Request that the patient limit the number of visitors accompanying the patient to the dental appointment to only those people who are necessary.
• Advise patients that they, and anyone accompanying them to the appointment, will be requested to wear a face covering when entering the facility and will undergo screening for fever and symptoms consistent with COVID-19.
• Systematically assess all patients and visitors upon arrival.
• Ensure that the patient and visitors have donned their own face covering, or provide a surgical mask if supplies are adequate.
• Ask about the presence of fever or other symptoms consistent with COVID-19.
• Actively take the patient’s temperature.
• If the patient is afebrile (temperature < 100.4˚F)* and otherwise without symptoms consistent with COVID-19, then dental care may be provided using appropriate engineering and administrative controls, work practices, and infection control considerations (described below).
• Ask patient to re-don their face covering at the completion of their clinical dental care when they leave the treatment area.
Even when we screen patients for respiratory infections, it is possible that a patient is confirmed to have COVID-19 at a later date. We request that the patient inform Clínica Dental Champsaur if they develop symptoms or are diagnosed with COVID-19 within 14 days following the dental appointment.
Facility Considerations
Take steps to ensure patients and staff adhere to respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette, as well as hand hygiene, and all patients follow triage procedures throughout the duration of the visit.
• We will post visual at the entrance and in strategic places (e.g., waiting areas, break rooms) to provide instructions (in appropriate languages) about hand hygiene and respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette. Instructions should include wearing a cloth face covering or facemask for source control, and how and when to perform hand hygiene.
• Provide supplies for respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette, including alcohol-based hand rub (ABHR) with 60– 95% alcohol, tissues, and no-touch receptacles for disposal, at healthcare facility entrances, waiting rooms, and patient check-ins.
• Install physical barriers (e.g., glass or plastic windows) at reception areas to limit close contact between triage personnel and potentially infectious patients.
• Place chairs in the waiting room at least six feet apart.
• Remove toys, magazines, and other frequently touched objects that cannot be regularly cleaned or disinfected from waiting areas.
• Minimize the number of persons waiting in the waiting room.
• Patients may opt to wait in a personal vehicle or outside the dental facility where they can be contacted by mobile phone when it is their turn for dental care.
• Minimize overlapping dental appointments.
For more information about the security measures of our Dentists in Panama, contact us.