Administrative strategy of dental clinic during the epidemic of Corona Virus Disease 2019

Abstract

Since an epidemic occur of Corona Virus Disease 2019(COVID-19) in December, 2019, all the dental healthcare service providers in our country have been greatly impacted. The strategy of managing the dental clinics is quite different from that of the medical healthcare clinics, and the key point of the administration of those dental healthcare providers is to focus on the management of outpatient care because they only supply just a little bit of inpatient care service but quite an large amount of outpatient care service. So we think the next step is to make plausible and effective scenarios to protect our dental healthcare staff and patients against corona virus infection during the treatments procedures after the reopening all of our dental clinics. To overcome this harsh condition, the infection prevention and control strategies adopted by the Stomatological Hospital, Southern Medical University were designed to be flexible and could be adjusted promptly according to the national and local governmental orders and latest guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All these prevention procedures and protocols were customized to fit our own situation and have been updated for several times based on the latest global pandemic reports. After going through the hardest time in the past four months, it’s considered that our COVID-19 prevention rules have been proved to be efficient and work well. Further more, it has made massive progress for the hospital in improving the capability of dealing with this state of emergency, especially by previewing and triaging patients strictly to cut off the possible coronavirus spreading from the original step, enhancing the standard precautions and those specific protocols made for minimizing the droplets, aerosol and contact transmission of COVID-19 indoors. Besides, a daily supervision system was set up as a routine job and a team of qualified infection prevention specialists were assigned to check and report every incorrect details during the whole procedure of dental practice. Meanwhile, the safety and well-being of the public and our medical workers could be also guaranteed through following those detailed prevention scenarios.

Keywords

• 2019 novel coronavirus
• corona virus disease 2019
• infection prevention and control
• dental clinic
• aerosol
• hospital infection
• pre-viewing and triage
• standard precaution
• hospital management
• administrative strategy