When COVID-19 began to make huge waves in February 2020, Care Dental’s emergent threat surveillance identified it as an item of significant concern. We took several decisive steps to learn more, all designed to best protect our teams, our families, and our patients. The first of which was to suspend in-practice operations, as our facility and approach at the time fell outside of acceptable risk-profiles. We were one of the first to close, but we didn’t sit at home waiting!
We looked to the College, to Health Canada, to the CSA, and used this guidance to come up with a plan, and an approach to address the concerns that the virus presented. We re-thought, re-considered, re-engineered, renovated and rewrote our entire thesis. We adjusted our vision and mission so that we could deliver care in a way that we felt best fit our ethos. This was the beginning!
The “end of the beginning” saw the creation of our first guidance document, Infection Prevention and Control for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): Interim Guidance for Care Dental. This 51 page document outlines the specific steps and processes that we are using to most-safely, and responsibly reopen to provide urgent and emergency care during the COVID-19 Pandemic to the communities of Kelowna and beyond. Although we utilise a 4-layered approach to airborne pathogen containment and elimination, as well as utilising patient flow, and infection control guidance specific to COVID-19 and outlined by Health Canada, the crown jewel of this effort is a BC first in a dental setting CSA-Z8000-18 Canadian Health Care Facilities Airborne Infection Isolation Room (AIIR) HVAC standard. Our guidance document was used as the basis by which we approach patient care during these unprecedented times. We built our facility, our processes, our training and our drills around it.
We trained on this document in dry-run sessions, we brought in consultants to help us with PPE, we conducted zoom virtual coaching with our teams so that public health orders were maintained throughout the process. We even caught the eye of UBC, and were interviewed by the Faculty of Dentistry and School of Public Health, so that they could learn more. We wanted to lead the charge.
Why? Its simple. You.
6, 8, 10 + weeks of treating significant pain with OTC analgesics. Uncontrolled, or multiple-courses of antibiotic treated oral infections, trauma, serious injury, this stuff doesn’t get better on its own, and people were showing up at the emergency room. We wanted to help with this. So, we listed as a BCDA emergency clinic, helped KGH central triage at 4AM each night, and got to work.
See you May 7, for the new Care Dental.