Decontamination is the process of removal of contaminants that include chemicals, radioactive substances, and microorganisms on an object or area. Thus, decontamination plays a vital role in the prevention of any hazard coming through contaminants, which is why the decontamination zone is of the utmost significance in any dental clinic design.
In case you are planning to start your squat dental practice, you must focus on the decontamination zone just as much as you focus on other areas. Let’s take a look at some essential facts that are important to keep in mind in the context of designing decontamination areas.
Points to Keep In Mind While Designing the Decontamination Area
The most important thing that you must consider while designing the decontamination zone is ensuring the maintenance of a dirty-to-clean airflow. However, there are many other factors that you must also take into account while planning your dental clinic decontamination design.
1. Lighting
For decontamination rooms, using the general ambient lighting will not be enough. You will have to refer to some specific lamps or lighting that can be mainly used for better examination of cleaned instruments.
You can prefer installing unique wall lighting that provides soft condensing lights. Such kind of lighting provision is beneficial in assuring the safety of the staff from injuries during the process of decontamination.
2. Flooring
After lighting, flooring is the next important factor that you must keep in mind while designing the decontamination area for your dental clinic. You can refer to a cap and cove flooring where vinyl sheet flooring can be expanded up to the wall. These flooring systems prevent the accumulation of dirt and contaminants in the flooring joins.
Moreover, such continuous flooring is quite easy and convenient for cleaning. For example, in Bushey Dental Surgery, we made sure that the flooring was not only able to prevent any fluid from passing through but was also non-slippery. This was done to ensure the well-being and safety of their staff members.
3. Storage
Your decontamination room must not have a shortage of storage spaces and sturdy cabinets. These storage spaces are very important for keeping the required instruments as they can be used for storing sterilised packages, cleaning agents, and other important things. Make sure your dental surgery cabinets are made of high-quality medical-grade materials. These materials can also be used for the same in dental surgery cabinets.
This way you won’t face any problems in cleaning it, and can also prevent the unwanted storage of contaminants on them. This is precisely what we did at the Bushey Dental Surgery, thereby, giving the storage of their decontamination zone a smooth finish, which made it very convenient for cleaning.
4. Sink Units
Since the main role of decontamination includes cleaning, disinfecting, and sterilisation of instruments, you consider the installation of adequate sink units. Different deep sink units must be used for different purposes. One can be used for cleansing and disinfection, and the other can be used for washing your hands or cleaning up dispensers.
For example, at Muswell-based Perfect Smile, we designed two sinks in different corners so one of those could be used for cleansing while the other one could be utilised for washing hands.
You can also consider installing a single sink unit with two bowls. However, you can also install a washer-disinfector or washing and rinsing sinks adjacent to the receiving area for best practice.
5. Adequate Space for All Equipment
Adequate space should be there to keep all your necessary equipment for the process of decontamination such as sterilisers autoclaves, ultrasonic baths, etc. It will also help you in keeping your dental squat practice decluttered and in a much better condition.
The role of storage space again comes in handy here as you can utilise those to store a bulk of your dental tools and other paraphernalia. This was proven beyond doubt when we designed the storage space for Harley Street-based Your Dentist. Although there wasn’t much space to set up a decontamination area at the clinic, the installation of storage cabinets ensured that they had a fully operational decontamination zone in place.
Bottom Line
So these are all the important aspects that you have to keep in mind when planning for the decontamination area. Being a dental squat practitioner, you have to be very careful in keeping a vigilant eye on the vital things that are useful in your dentistry practice. Remember to ensure adequate bench space, before planning for the decontamination room design. Also, having separate storage space for all instruments is a must.
