What is personal protective equipment and what does it do to protect you? How does it work? If these are questions you’ve ever wondered about in regards to your dental visits, check out today’s Tuesday Tooth Talk for answers! Dr. Kuiper takes time to explain how Sioux Center Dental uses PPE to ensure your safety during your dental care with us!

PPE, or personal protective equipment, helps prevent the spread of infectious disease among our patients, our staff, and the community as a whole. We always try to go above and beyond in our care, so here are some examples of PPE that we use at Sioux Center Dental.

The first step we take is wearing surgical gowns or jackets to prevent spreading of infected liquids from patient to patient. Along with that, disposable latex-free gloves are worn at all times and often changed if they get soiled during longer procedures. Face shields will now be worn over top of our normal glasses or magnifiers. These shields are cleaned between each patient and prevent any splatter or aerosols from getting on our staff’s skin or hair and then passed to other people. Masks come in many varieties, but we will either be wearing surgical masks or N95 respirators during any procedure at Sioux Center Dental. N95 respirators filter out more aerosols than surgical masks, but they are hard to breath through, hard to obtain, and very expensive. Because they allow the highest level of protection, we will be using them and extending their use by wearing surgical masks and face shields over top to allow us to provide you with the greatest protection while also not consuming large amounts of PPE that could be used by other health care facilities. 

We will be going above and beyond to ensure your safety and provide quality care here at Sioux Center dental through our use of PPE. If you have any questions or concerns about how we are using PPE to protect you or the community, please do not hesitate to give us a call!

Find us on YouTube!