Decontamination CPD Made Enjoyable! – PDP218

Teaser:
If you’ve got sterile gauze in, great. But yeah, the cheaper way of doing it, just get non-sterile gauze, or you can use lint-free cloth. The two fundamental waters that we have to use within dentistry for everything is distilled or RO. And the only reasons why we are using those two types of water is because both of them are deemed good quality water. They’ve got no magnesium, nothing like that. And thirdly, they have no endotoxins in them.

Jaz’s Introduction:
Protruserati, I’d never thought I’d see the day that I’d be publishing an episode on decontamination. How dare I veer away from those beloved clinical topics to talk about decon? Well, in the UK as you know, it’s a required topic. It’s a recommended topic by the GDC. The problem is a topic like decon is violently boring until now.

I’m so pleased and proud to announce that Protrusive is going to reduce your CPD burden by recording and publishing episodes that are relevant to the recommended fields, but with a twist. Instead of those incredibly boring lectures that are used to in the field of decon, medical emergencies, and radiation protection, I’m actually gonna try my best to make it fun, to make it tangible in true Protrusive nature.

So now you can not only learn something, enjoy the conversation, I hope, but do a massive, big fat tick to the end of year CPD declaration so that by the end of your cycle, you complete your five hours of decon and your recommended hours for medical emergencies and radiation. So, all the good stuff will come soon.

This is core CPD, but not as you know it. It’s gonna be different. It’s gonna be hopefully enjoyable. The reason I think we’ve made it enjoyable is three reasons. Number one, I’m an inquisitive idiot. There are certain fields of dentistry, like implants, like decontamination that I literally know nothing about, and I am learning so much, and I’d love for you to be a fly on the wall and learn, because at the end of the day, sometimes when you are tuning into a conversation, like a podcast type conversation, you soak up and you learn so much more than just being talked at like in a webinar or in a lecture that you may be used to.

Number two, we don’t just cover the usual how many degrees in autoclave we actually cover real world scenarios. For example, how to properly disinfect your mirrors without scratching them, or should we be using PTFE inside the pulp chamber if it’s not been autoclaved. And what are the two most common mistakes that we are making day in, day out that are so easy to fix? Our guest Decon Pete is gonna answer all those questions. 

And number three, Decon Pete, our guest today, he’s super knowledgeable, but he’s relatable. He’s a human, he shows us human side, and he’s just so knowledgeable and it was absolutely brilliant to chat with him. I’m so excited for you to listen to this episode and again, put that big fat tick next to CPD.

Now, hundreds of you are used to getting CPD from Protrusive, but understandably, many of you, this will be your first time. I welcome you. I’d love for you to join the Protrusive family. The way to get involved is www.protrusive.app. It’s best to make your account on the web browser so you’re not paying all your money to Apple.

And we Protrusive don’t get anything. I’m just saying the truth. If you wanna actually support Protrusive, you go on the web browser www.protrusive.app, and you choose one of our paid plans, either Podcast CE only, so you get podcast CPD hours and CE credits, or you get access all areas through the Ultimate Education plan.

It is tax deductible, and I think it’s the best value CPD going in the universe. Of course, I’m a little biased. But if you love these episodes, why not answer the quiz at the end of the episode and get your CPD. Also, once you make an account, you can download our native app on Android or iOS and join the nicest and geekiest dentist in the world.

I guarantee you, you’ll sign up for the CPD, but you’ll stay for the people and the friends that you’ll meet on the Protrusive Guidance app. So if you are sick and tired of paying for CPD memberships that you never actually log into. Pick Protrusive ’cause this is the one that you use every single day.

Even one of our dentists, Megan recently said that she checks the app every day as though it’s Instagram. So like I said, if you’re paying for a subscription and not using it, what’s the point? There is so much to learn on the Protrusive community and I’d love for you to join us. If you wanna get the Access All Areas plan, go to protrusive.co.uk/ultimate. That’s protrusive.co.uk/ultimate. And we, the Protruserati, are excited to see you on the app. 

Dental Pearl
The Protrusive Dental Pearl I have for you is something from the community. You guys asked, what’s the best way to clean your loops? Now, unfortunately, I ran out of time to ask him this question, but I called him up later and I said, Pete, we need to know the answer from you ’cause you are the expert.

And so this is how it goes. Firstly, how often should we be cleaning and disinfecting our loops? Well, technically, if you wanna aim for the highest level, you should be doing it between every single patient. That’s right, every single time you use them. And every time you change a patient before, then you need to disinfect them, because very often there’s aerosol that could be droplets.

So for that reason, they should be, ideally, he said, clean between every patient, but the very least for practicality reasons at the end of every clinical session. So I think it’s out for judgment as well. Like if you’re doing lots of aerosol based procedures, then I would just clean before the next patient.

But if it’s checkups and there’s not much aerosol produced, then at the end of the clinical session is practical. So how do you clean them all? Firstly, what you shouldn’t do is ever submerge your loops in water, for example, like don’t submerge them in any liquid that’s gonna mess up your lens. What Pete suggests is to use something like distilled water and a microfiber cloth on the outside, like the frame and the nose pad, and you can even use like a Q-tip or a cotton bud, get in a nooks and crannies and as well as your microfiber cloth to actually clean the lens.

The most important and expensive part of your loops, you want to use something like 70% isopropyl alcohol. So one of those alcohol based wipes that you have in the clinic. They should not contain acetone or bleach. There should be 70% alcohol. You can disinfect them with that wipe and then go over it with your microfiber cloth.

Once again, allow that to air dry and then store away safely. Now, if you are using shields, then technically you don’t need to disinfect them as often. Using a shield means that your lens and loops are protected. But if like me, you’re not using a shield, then yes, we must disinfect them because the worst thing can happen is like a droplet falling from the actual lens part.

So make sure at the very least, you’re disinfecting the lens itself and you can use a 70% isopropyl alcohol wipe, as I said. So thanks Pete for answering that question, and we’ve got so many more questions that we covered in the episode. Let’s join it now and I’ll catch you in the outro. 

Main Episode:
Pete Gibbons, AKA Decon Pete, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you? 

[Pete]
I’m very good, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. Looking forward to it. 

[Jaz]
How long have you been in this space and how did you get into decontamination? Because we’ve touched base four years ago and you know what? Yeah. I’m so nervous about recording something that will put my drivers, people who are driving to sleep. And then, the podcast gets blamed for not, it’s just decon is one of those things that we do it not because no one wants to do it, we do it because we wanna legally have to do it. But until today we’re gonna make it interesting and actually answer questions that you want to know. But tell us about your journey into this piece. 

[Pete]
Yeah, we’ll try to decon, it’s a very dry subject, let’s put it that way. It’s not the most riveting of subjects, however, I find it quite riveting. I absolutely love it. I mean, I’ve worked in dentistry for 19 years this year. And I’ve primarily worked with sort of manufacturers and also distributors as well.

And I first got introduced into decon in 2009, which was just when the English HTM obviously landed on every NHS practices door. And everyone was fretting about it. And it was another document that came out and we’d seen these documents come and they’d go and everyone kind of thought that it’s not really gonna stay.

There was a lot of uncertainty about the document and a lot of people kind of read it and didn’t really know what they needed to do, what they didn’t need to do. And it kind of, I was working for a medical device company at the time and one of the things that really became apparent to us at the time was that we had an area where we could really help dentists, we could really help dental practices, nurses, we could really help the whole team sort of navigate this new guidance document that was just coming out that was in its early fledgling, sort of ethos, sort of arena. And yeah, it’s kind of stuck to be honest.

I’ve loved kind of helping teams along the way, just kind of navigate what they need to do. And you’d be surprised, we still get a lot of questions. There’s a lot of teams that need that help and advice. And I worked for a very large distributor and headed up all their decon and looked after the education program and were really just a go to for dental teams to come to understand what this new HTM was telling everybody to do, and then kind of morphed into the WHTM, the Welsh Arena. Then you had the Northern Irish, you’ve got Scotland, and I was working very closely with Ireland as well, with the Republic and, you know, the Republic. 

[Jaz]
And did they greatly differ these countries in terms of what they had?

[Pete]
Yeah, I guess they do. I mean, England and Wales are very similar. Wales generally always followed the English guidance, and they’re always a year behind. But the documents were very, they pretty much mirrored each other. I mean, and the same with Northern Ireland as well. I mean, at the end of the day, you had this big English document that people have spent a load of time doing for why rewrite it at the end of the day?

And, so Wales and Northern Ireland kind of took that document, made their own regional changes, and made it their own. And Scotland’s, when you look at the English document, we very much took lead from Scotland, because Scotland’s document, Scotland’s guidance is really at the highest stake.

[Jaz]
You know what? I’m glad you said that because something about Scotland, right? One of my lecturers in pathology in dental school, he called Scotland the sick man of Europe in terms of health economics and that kind of stuff. Yet they come out with the best guidance. Even like the SDCEP guidance, right? Like antimicrobials, MRONJ. Like why are Scotland so good at guidelines? 

[Pete]
I think ultimately what happened many years ago, sort of 2004, 2005, the state of Scottish dentist dentistry needed a complete overhaul. Each individual practice was completely different, and we hear a lot of horror stories from what’s happened up in Scotland.

There’s been several high profile cases that have come from Scotland. One up until 2010 was Alan Morrison, who had two practices in aha. One in come knock and one in gon and it was the Daily Mail clicked onto that story and it was quite unbelievable what was kind of happening within Scottish dentistry.

And so, Scottish government just took belt and braces and invested a load of money into dentistry. Scottish Dentistry got a lot of support in terms of decon rooms. So they got given money for decon rooms, they got given some money to relocate practice. If they had no room for decon rooms, they obviously took away, when you look at our guidance, they took away that essential quality and those best practice elements and just made everything best practice and make everything mandatory.

And there’s no like, um, and RN about it. I love the Scottish guidance purely because you know where you stand with the Scottish guidance. And that’s kind of where I wish the English guidance would go and I kind of wish, and I talking to a lot of my peers and a lot of people in the industry, that’s kind of where just everyone wants, everyone just wants to know what to be told, what to do. 

[Jaz]
It reminds me of like, I’m an associate, right? So like most associates, they have a vague familiarity with the decontamination protocols. But when you’re a principal, this is your business. You are really deeply ingrained in it, and you feel it a lot more. And this is really palpable during Covid.

So when SOPs came and like the amount of stress it caused principles, ’cause suddenly it’s a bit like when the HTM the one came out is like a brand new thing. Everyone’s trying to figure out how best to do it. So it’s good to get some clarity from you that yes, you know what the Scottish guidance is great.

And I like the idea that yes, ideally there should be more unified and England should follow that. And what we look for is clarity. Now you must go to a lot of practices and I am sure that the kind of stuff you are teaching and helping to improve ’cause ultimately you are in the business of safety.

You are in the business of patient safety and high quality care. People think of high quality care, like, really seamlessly blending in veneer margins and stuff. No high quality care is, safety is paramount. And everything we do in infection control is exactly that. So it is a really important parameter.

Like when I go to a practice and when I’m applying to a practice for a job, I actually look at, okay, how seriously do they take their decon? Because that’s a sign that okay, if they take that seriously, that they’ll take over the care of the other things importantly as well. I’m sure you are teaching your nurses that you train very basic things.

So the question I was asking you, Pete, actually, the question I was asking you is, so I’ve seen your website, you visit a lot of practices. You are kind of like the detective guy. You’re kind of like a CQC kind of chat, you’re like investigating. You’re seeing are they doing best practices.

So the first thing I’d love to know from you, which I think will give so much of value to everyone, ’cause yeah, we go to the mandatory CPD, we do the Irma, we do the Decon. But I really would like with your expert knowledge, try and answer the questions that we really wanna know about. And I think the lowest hanging fruit is what is the silliest mistake, common mistake that you just wanna bang your head in because this is such an easy, easy, lowest hanging fruit.

[Pete]
Actually, two things. One of them is manual cleaning instruments just with surgical gloves on. And I see so many practices doing that and it offers them no protection whatsoever. 

[Jaz]
So what you’re trying to say is that the nurses are leaving themselves vulnerable and exposed by just using like the nitrile gloves. Is that what you mean? 

[Pete]
So they’re using either nitrile, surgical or clinical gloves. That’s all they’re using. I say to a lot of practices when I first go there, look, at the end of the day, everything about infection prevention and control is about protecting, firstly, you guys, everybody that works in healthcare, and then secondly, your patients coming in.

And thirdly, those outside visitors coming into those high risk areas. Nobody wants to come to work in the morning and leave at the end of the day with something that didn’t have first thing in the morning. Nobody wants that. You don’t sign up to a job to think, oh, I know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna contract something today because that’s really what I want to do.

Nobody wants that. And I think as human beings, we can become very robotic in our day-to-day work. When you know your job inside out, it can often make us lazy. We can often look at cutting corners. We can often look at trying to shortfall things where, when it comes to infection prevention control. 

[Jaz]
I’m gonna give you an example off the bat. Like you mentioned a really good thing that, you know, we might drop our guard, let our guard down. So, and a classic example is, yeah, the nurse leaves the room and at that exact moment you need something. So not that we shouldn’t doing this, but with a gloved hand, you then open the door and you pick something up and look, yeah, I’m being honest, like, we do this, we shouldn’t do it.

Okay. But it’s one of those things, right? That okay, no, take the glove off. You’ve gotta do it properly. All these rules are there for a reason. But yes, carry on. You are about to come to two mistakes. So one is the gloves. So what should they using? 

[Pete]
So, one is the gloves. They’ve got to be using a heavy duty glove. They need to do- 

[Jaz]
Marigolds? 

[Pete]
Marigold gloves are fine. What I say to a lot of practices is ’cause for some reason, I think as humans we find that, that you get to a lot of people where they almost get the ick, we put their hand into a glove that somebody else has put their hand into.

So I always say to them, look, you can wear your gloves underneath the marigolds, but always make sure you wear the marigolds because okay, no marigold in the world is puncture resistant, but they’ll offer you a lot more protection than just that surgical glove on its own. And you have to take your protection.

But protection, I think personal protective equipment is as it states, and it is not there to be shorted. It shouldn’t be cut. You shouldn’t be cutting corners when it comes to personal protective. 

[Jaz]
See, I didn’t know this by the way. I know I’m gonna learn so much from you. So I didn’t know about this. So I’m gonna go in to work tomorrow and I’m gonna be looking in the decon rooms. Are they protecting themselves? And you know what, I’m sure they’d be so grateful if I was say to you can protect yourself more by using this. So is the concern that the surgical glove, the nitrile or latex, whatever they’re using, it’s porous and it’s battered-

[Pete]
Oh, two things. Yes. It’s porous. And I think a lot of people forget that they are porous. And this is why we disinfect our hands. This is why you are disinfecting your hands in between glove changes as opposed to washing your hands in between glove change. Because a disinfector will act like a varnish and it’ll realistically give you protection.

It’s a second barrier protection for your skin is that alcohol rub. And a disinfector generally is designed to kill anything that comes into contact with it. So any airborne pathogens, anything that seeps through the glove is gonna be killed by the disinfector you’ve just applied to your skin underneath.

So that’s the first thing is obviously they’re porous. Second thing is they’re not puncture resistant. They’re not puncture proof. And there is a risk that you could develop a sharps injury because of the nature of manual cleaning. Yes, you are supposed to keep use a longhand or bristle brush, and you are supposed to immerse the instruments underneath the water and then scrub underneath the water. 

So in theory, by doing that, your scrubbing hand is not getting near that sharp end. And your hand that you’re holding the instrument with is not getting near the sharp end. In reality, it doesn’t always happen like that. That’s not the reality of it. And we have to be practical with a lot of things.

And when it comes down to cleaning all this kind of stuff, if we can cut things because we are being pressured and the nurses are being pressured to get the instruments back in a big throughput, quick throughput, that’s where the corners get cut. And this is why we kind of see as the guidance that what should disinfectors are becoming best practice.

The reason being is because they almost 99% eliminate any manual cleaning whatsoever. Don’t need to do any manual cleaning. The only time you ever need to manually, [overlapping conversation], glass ionomer, aqua chem, poly F, stuff like that on there. There’s no washer in the world that will remove GIC when it’s when it’s stuck on.

Or they’ll remove cement. They just won’t do it. So it’s always advisable to get that off while it’s wet, whether you as the clinician remove it while it’s wet or before it’s handed over to the nurse, or whether the nurse does it while it’s still wet, but obviously not trying to remove it. If you have got anything like that on the instrument, then yes, you do have to physically remove that first before putting it into the washer.

[Jaz]
I’m gonna censor the bit where you said the dentist should do- 

[Pete]
It’s either, to be honest, it’s either or and what I find it’s very much down to the relationship. 

[Jaz]
Sometimes they do it because it is how you work in practice. 

[Pete]
Some dentists do like doing it themselves and some nurses rather do it themselves. It’s very much how that working relationship goes. There’s certainly no right or wrong way of doing that. It is just advisable to get it off while it’s wet because ultimately what you’re trying to do is minimize any level of manual cleaning whatsoever. If you can minimize any level of manual cleaning, then you minimize the sharps risk and the inherent risks afterwards.

So you increase the protection of the members of staff that are there as well by doing that. So it is one of those things, and that’s why we see washer disinfectors being best practice in terms of England and Wales, you know, mandatory in Scotland and Northern Ireland, they are mandatory in there already. They’ve had them mandatory for many years. They have to use them. 

[Jaz]
What percentage of clinics in England do you think are still relying on manual cleaning? 

[Pete]
It is diminishing, I must admit, and I’ve seen it diminish over sort of the last sort of five or six years I would say. We’re still in manual cleaning. We’re still probably about 55, 60% still manually cleaning. 

[Jaz]
Wow. For those who are listening on Spotify and Apple, like my jaw, my mandible just dropped. I’m shocked. 

[Pete]
It’s probably that high. Yeah. The thing is that we’ve gotta think- 

[Jaz]
How much is a washer disinfector? 

[Pete]
So washer disinfector, typically anything from 4,000 pounds to. Seven and a half, 8,000 pounds depending on the configuration that you have in it. But most washer disinfectors, the problem is with washer disinfectors is they’ve not got the best or they’ve not had the best history. And we have to remember that when HTM first came out in 2009, well actually came out of the draft in 2008, and then we had the hard copy hitting in 2009, and that was talking about this whole thermal washer disinfector scenario.

There were no small benchtop washer disinfectors, so of course manufacturers, they looked to the one market that has them already, which is the domestic market. So they look to the dishwasher and how can we take a dishwasher and slightly retrofit it to fit into this medical arena? Bearing in mind your dishwasher only heats up to 60 degrees, so they needed to get something that would heat up to 80 degrees and hold that for 10 minutes and so forth.

And of course that that’s all they changed. They didn’t really change anything else. And you use your dishwasher once a day, you are using a thermal disinfector 2, 3, 4, 5 times a day. So the reliability really wasn’t great for them and they had a bad history in terms of buying a washer and it forever being broken down.

So everybody just decided to ditch them. And revert back to manual cleaning because the one thing about manual cleaning or the main thing is it does obviously pose the highest risk, but the one thing about manual cleaning is it’ll never break down. Unless all your staff go sick, nothing, it’s not gonna break down at all.

The problem with it is it’s a non validatable process. And it’s an inconsistent process. Everybody will clean differently. Whereas a thermal disinfector is very much, every single cycle is the same. They are a lot more reliable now. They’re made as medical devices. They’re made from the ground up. They’re not converted dishwashers in the sense of a converted dishwasher. They are very much built for. 

[Jaz]
The analogy is very powerful. I didn’t know that. Now, Decon Pete, do you sell these pieces of equipment? 

[Pete]
No, I don’t. I advise practices on pieces of equipment that are out there. So- 

[Jaz]
Do you have a financial interest with any company?

[Pete]
No. I freelance work. I do some freelance work for a German company called MELAG, and I work with them on promoting, but I will genuinely help practices decide because there’s items that MELAG have that aren’t gonna fit with every practice. So it is got to be a product. And a lot of the suppliers that I work with, and a lot of the companies that I work with are very much built on the history and the years I’ve worked in the industry.

I will openly tell a practice if a product is good or not. If a product is good, in my opinion. And they are all purely my opinion if products are good or not. But no, no financial, no. You know, I do a lot of- 

[Jaz]
No, I was just wondering, but it makes sense. I was just say, can I have a recommendation for if someone’s starting a squat practice? Brand new practice. And, you know, probably for a squat practice, you want to start on the right foot. You probably don’t want to, I mean, obviously people are cash strapped. Maybe they would start with manual cleaning and then eventually when they got better revenue, then buy the Washington Vector. But if they were gonna buy one, what’s the most reliable one that you’ve come across?

[Pete]
I would say it’s probably two that are fairly reliable. So SciCan do one which is called the SciCan C 61, which is their new G 4 technology, which is sort of cloud technology, cloud-based. So the idea behind it is that your daily logs and so forth all get stored on the cloud. And then, by doing that you can have error codes sent to your service provider, for example. So, if your washer throws up an error, normally the service provider will get a report and they’ll know what that error is. So it’s very much the way technology’s going. And we are very much in that digital element, not just in dentistry, but also in Decon.

Everything is going digital. Trying to make it as easy as possible. And it’s the future of dentistry, it’s the future of where it’s going and MELAG, I would say, at two different avenues. So, the side can, in terms of a bench top, something that’ll sit on the bench or something that will also go under the bench because it depends on if space is a premium within a practice.

And then a MELAG unit would be under bench. I would kind of recommend MELAtherm10 again, very future-proofed. It very much depends on the number of surgeries as well. I always advise practices when they’re looking at washers, match a washer to the number of surgeries that you have.

Really, really talk to somebody about what procedures are you running in a day worth of checkups? It’s very much different to doing all surgery or something like that, the number of instruments you’re using. So it’ll very much depend on what procedures you’re doing. What kind of instruments you’re using, what kind of kits you’re using.

Are you using clip, trace, things like that. And then look at the various manufacturers out there and have a look at what internal furniture they offer for that washer as well. Sometimes, big is not always better. Everyone looks to the big washer disinfectors. That’s not always the best thing. Have a look for something that is going to be relatively quick. The smaller the unit, the less water it’ll use, the quicker the cycle will be, rather than the big unit having to use more water and take in longer cycle times. 

[Jaz]
Well, that reminds me of the question actually. We’re moving in a direction of trying to be as green as possible as well. Are there any brands or models out there that market themselves and being proud of being very green carbon footprint, that kind of stuff, or not?

[Pete]
When it comes to washer, I mean, ultimately I would say when it comes to was disinfector is looking for something that is a 13 amp power supply is gonna be better than utilizing something that’s 16 amp or 30 amp. They’re gonna use more electricity. So from a sustainability aspect, that’s far better.

Use a washer that is a cold water fill rather than a hot and cold fill. Because again, from a sustainability aspect, that’ll be slightly better. You’re not having to use your boiler to heat up using energy so forth. Use something that utilizes a small chamber. We’ll use less water to fill up that chamber.

So again, from sustainability aspect, you’re being far better in that sense. So, there’s different ways that you can be more sustainable and I work with a lot of practices on how to be more sustainable and what they can look at. It’s very difficult when it comes to capital equipment, when it comes to Decon equipment, but there are certainly things that you can look at, and I would say they’re the main ones. Look at the water, look at the electricity usage and look at the incoming supply, whether it needs hot and cold. There are a lot out there that need hot and cold. 

[Jaz]
These are kind of conversations that make me so, so happy that I’m not a practice owner. But I mean, so much, so much to think about, but you know what? Someone like you to advise is just, I can see why you create a wonderful niche in terms of having an advisor can save you a lot of headache and ultimately will probably save you money as well. 

[Pete]
Yeah, definitely. 

[Jaz]
And you mentioned already that the main issue, one of the main, simple, low hanging fruit was the incorrect use of surgical gloves. When they’re cleaning, what was the second low hanging fruit? 

[Pete]
The second, I would say in the way that the nurses are transporting the instruments, I see a lot of practices. Two things. I see a lot of practices literally just transporting the instruments on the tray into the decon room, which is completely incorrect.

Got to be in a leakproof box because there’s a risk if they do trip up, then if those instruments are gonna go everywhere. So that’s the first thing I see in a lot of practices and also see a lot of issues in the practices where they are carrying the box with both hands because it’s too heavy.

‘Cause it has a water solution in there. Now when it comes to that transportation box, that dirty box, that box should not be too heavy, that you cannot carry it with one hand. If you have to carry it with two hands, it’s too heavy. Because how do you open the door? 

[Jaz]
So it’s kind of like having like a handle one of those systems with a handle, right? With one hand handle. 

[Pete]
Having something with a handle would always be quite good. I see some of these boxes that have got so long as it’s got a lockable leak proof lid. So that the idea is that if you drop it, it’s not going to crack. The lids not gonna come flying off. Or even if the lid doesn’t come flying off, the water’s not gonna come out if there’s water inside it.

So that’s the first thing. Secondly, yeah, the ones with the handles are quite good because you can obviously get a few more instruments in there if you need to. But if you don’t have one with a handle on the top, then it’s got to be not too heavy that you can’t carry it just one hand. You’ve gotta be able to carry it one hand because you need a naked other hand to be able to open the doors as you go through.

You shouldn’t be placing that box down somewhere whilst you open the doors to then pick the box back up and then walk around. It’s all health and safety at the end of the day. 

[Jaz]
So do any clinics use a trolley? To transport? 

[Pete]
Not really, no. Because where we find a lot of, I mean, it very, it does very much depend on the clinic. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t surgeries that don’t do that. But, no, I haven’t really seen any using a trolley. I have seen a practice incidentally using the old or the not old, these money canisters that you see in the supermarkets and they used to shove them up the air vent and it used to go shooting around the supermarket.

I’ve seen practices using those for instruments where they’ve installed a pressurized tubing system in the practice. And each clinic has a little area where they can just load the instruments into a pod and it just gets shot straight into the deep. 

[Jaz]
The telescope in a hospital as well. I’ve seen that recently. 

[Pete]
Exactly, exactly that exact same thing. And I suppose in sense, if you’re doing it from brand new, and these were brand new builds, so they kind of factored it all in straight away. But if you are doing it as a brand new build, it does negate anybody having to walk to the decon room to go and try. So takes out that whole transportation issue out the integration. 

[Jaz]
All bells and whistles, brand new site, you have the option. So it’s good to talk about, that option does exist. 

[Pete]
Yeah, you can have it and there’s no right. There’s nothing to say that you can’t have it. When we look at anything HTM, WHTM and all that, they only guidance documents. They are only guidance. Ultimately, practices need to be following manufacturer’s instructions. For whatever they’re using. It doesn’t matter if it contradicts everything within HTM, you follow manufacturer’s guidance. 

[Jaz]
Are there instances whereby what the manufacturer’s guidance is saying contradicts HTM and tell us more about that.

[Pete]
So water bottles is the prime example. I was going about water bottles, but it’s a key example. THM, WHTM, SHTM, the new Scottish HTM, which has superseded the SDCEP or that deone element of SDCEP that talks about it. And it also dates that your water bottle should be removed at the end of every day.

It should be rinsed out, inverted and left to air dry throughout the night. So the idea is that you basically drain your treatment center of all water. You take your bottle off. And that’s for Legionella and it’s for biofilm production. Now, what HTM and WHTM doesn’t take into account is what if you have an additive in your water.

So something like Alpron or something like Clean Certs or Bioclear Daily, there’s other little additives. There’s a little A-dec tablets, things like that. There’s other little additives that you can use. Now all of those tablets are all telling you keep the bottle on. So they say keep the bottle on at the end of the day and- 

[Jaz]
Screwed into your surgery unit, basically right? 

[Pete]
Into the surgical unit with the additive in the solution, and it remains in there for up to seven days. Now when you look at it, which guidance are you to take? You’ve got HTM telling you to remove the bottle off. But the manufacturers of the additive that you’re putting in your water are telling you to leave the bottle on. You always follow the manufacturer’s guidance. Always follows it. It supersedes everything. HTM, oh, absolute note. 

[Jaz]
And medical, legally, like, and guidance is there to your broken, obviously. ‘Cause you’ve got manufacturer guidance. 

[Pete]
Manufacturer wins. 

[Jaz]  
Manufacturer wins basically. 

[Pete]
In the absence of manufacturer’s instructions, that’s when guidance comes, falls into play. Guidance talks about things like, so if we look at what, so look at ultrasonic baths, for example.

Okay. Guidance documents talks about weekly protein testing of an instrument. And it also talks about a quarterly soil test for the ultrasonic bath and a quarterly foil test for the ultrasonic bath. Now, HTM and all those documents talk about foil being done in a three by three grid. So nine pieces of foil.

Whereas most common small dental ultrasonic baths would all say one piece of foil or three pieces of foil. Again, whose guidance do you take? You follow the manufacturers. In the absence of any manufacturer’s instructions, that’s when you refer back to HTM or WHTM or something like that for advice. 

[Jaz]
When you tell dentists about this, about the fact that actually manufacturers guidance trumps what the guidance says. Are they shocked? Are they very grateful? Are they surprised or- 

[Pete]
I say a lot of ’em are surprised because they seem to think that they should be following what HTM says. And I get a lot of questions through social media and I get a lot of questions via the website on this exact thing through WhatsApp and so forth on we’re being told to do X, Y, Z, but the guidance is telling us to do this.

What do we follow? And ultimately, you always follow that manufacturers because when we look at things, it’s a bit like if you have a policy written up and there’s a lot of compliance companies out there that will have policies, a lot of practices will be signed up to compliance policies and there’ll be most of these compliance, manufacturer compliance companies will have generic policies that they’ll send out.

Now the idea is that generic policy is looking at, so say a policy for decom, for example, and it goes step by step, the full decom process. So that’s general policy covers manual cleaning, ultrasonic bath. Wash disinfector because that’s what the guidance outlines as well. Now, if a practice doesn’t change that policy as far as the practice is concerned, that step-by-step policy says, first of all, you manually clean, then you ultrasonic bath, then you wash a disinfector.

But if the practice doesn’t have an ultrasonic bath or a wash disinfector, then that policy doesn’t become apparent at all. It’s non-applicable to their practice. 

[Jaz]
To give you a clinical analogy, I’m sure we can give one is a bit, is that when we are removing a lower tooth, but in our notes it says, careful the sinus risk told.

[Pete]
Exactly. As your clinical note taking as well. It’s got to marry up with what you’re physically doing, smoking cessation, stuff like that. It’s got all got to marry up and that’s exactly the same as it comes to the policy. Ultimately, as far as the practice is concerned, that policy should be pertinent to their practice. And that policy trumps everything, and that’s all CQC will look at HIW, HIS whoever your inspector body is, whether it be in Ireland or Northern Ireland or mainland UK, they will be wanting to see that your policy, whatever that policy be, is actually pertinent to your practice.

Regardless of what HTM says, HTM, as I said, is your fallback in the absence of any of that manufacturer’s support and help you fall back to HTM because it’s a bit like, and I used an analogy of things like cars. Now, years ago, your car manufacturers would always say, if you buy a brand new car, don’t drive it over 70 miles an hour for the first 5,000 miles or something like that.

You had to let the engine warm up and embed itself. Obviously that’s not the case anymore. Now, there’s no way that you would buy a brand new car and go against what they’re telling you to do with that car. And that’s another way to look at it when it comes to manufacturer’s guidance. You follow what they say. It trumps everything.

[Jaz]
I’m learning a lot I have to say, because again, this is something that has never really piqued my interest, but I have to say that all this is very relevant, very good. And especially I think the practice owners out there, or prospective practice owners are really, really listen ing closely to this. I wanna just change it up to make it applicable to all clinical dentists. And we’ll talk about PTFE. I messaged you before. PTFE is something that we use universally. We get buy it from the hardware store. We cut it up, we stick it in the surface. We stick it in root canal chambers. We have a myriad of uses that are intraoral and extraoral. Should we be disinfecting in any way the PTFE before it enters the oral cavity? 

[Pete]
It’s difficult with regards to disinfecting of PTFE. You can sterilize it. I would advise if you’re gonna sterilize it, best practice puts that as the clean side of the decon room. So very much similar to things like root elevators and stuff like that. Something you’re not gonna use that often. You’d store it either outside of the clinic or in the clean side of a decon room. And in that sense. And you bring it out when you need it, by doing that- 

[Jaz]
Well, no, PTFE, like it is just, I use it daily. So for me, it lives in the surgery, but we lives in the drawers. Covered. 

[Pete]
Yeah. You’d wanna keep it covered in a box because the problem is, is every time you open that drawer. That aerosol that’s been generated within the air will take about 10 to 15 minutes to constantly fall down to floor level.

So there is a risk of when you open that draw, you’ve still got that aerosol falling down, which is why we clean and disinfect the treatment center in between every patient because of the droplets still falling down to floor level. So ultimately you would want to store it in a box, to keep it as protected as possible and then bring it out. I mean, realistically, if you want to sterilize it, there’s nothing to say that you can’t. However- 

[Jaz]
I think there’s a place for that. But I think the place for that is a niche one, because when we are dressing root canals, yeah, classically, I was trained on using cotton pellets years ago. And cotton pelles are, are the worst.

If you look at it in a scanning electron microscope. They’re hairy. They reach out, they come out of the restorative, they’re full of bacteria laden. So I’m sure you agree that actually cotton is the worst thing. You could use sponges. Then nets came in. I use these little sponges.

They were good. But then PTFE is just so nice to work with. So nice to pack and so in root canal systems where we’re trying to keep as aseptic as possible and where we actually don’t need the PTFE to be so nice. 

[Pete]
No, no, no. 

[Jaz]
When we are actually sometimes doing it up against teeth and we’re putting composite up against it, we actually don’t want those folds in the PTFE, but where we are scrunching it up on purpose in the root canal system in the pulp chamber. I think to autoclave that is grand. So your advice of putting some blobs in a pouch. Stick in the autoclave and then using it when you need it, in the root canal system. 

[Pete]
Yeah. I mean, there’s nothing, there’s no right or wrong way. There’s nothing to say. You can’t do that. I mean, at the end of the day, you have to risk assess it. Realistically, what are the risks associated with using PTFE in a canal? The risks are minimal. There are other items that pose greater risk than the use of PTFE tape and if you’re keeping it as aseptic as possible, so you’re minimizing that cross. Like everything we use within dentistry, you wanna keep everything as aseptic as possible. Then the risks are- 

[Jaz]
I mentioned this in the community, Pete and then Ashley Peile. He said something brilliant. He says, if you’re gonna open the can of worms by asking about disinfecting PTFE, I might take a screenshot so we can put it on the video. Actually. He then said, what about matrices, cotton wool, tips for flowable, gloves, wedges, retraction wedjets, , rubber dam. 

[Pete]
Exactly, exactly that. You don’t sterilize your rubber dam, you don’t do any of that. I see it with non-sterile endo files, K files, things like that, that come into practice. They’re not pre sterile and they’re used straight away. Now, realistically, they should be sterilized first. But again, aseptically, it’s aseptic, the risks are minimal. Yes. You don’t wanna be using those afterwards. So you could argue with a lot of things.

There are other instruments that mustn’t not go through those procedures, and they are the instruments that you have in situ already in the practice, and you are using day to day from one patient to the next patient, to the next patient. You’re not using PTFE from one patient to the next patient. So. Yeah. The risks are minimal. Absolutely minimal. 

[Jaz]
Brilliant. And then the next one, the next common question I see in the community, I’ve been seeing this question in the community for years and years and years, and it’s actually a cost saving measure because of these occlusal mirrors.

They can cost a lot of money and they get scratched. And it’s a real shame ’cause over the years you start to see your images, your occlusal images get very scratchy. So I would like to know from you, what’s the best practice that you have observed in a clinic that are correctly disinfecting occlusal mirrors. But in a way that it’s gonna preserve the sort of reflective element and, and prevent scratches. 

[Pete]
So, a couple of things. So first of all, there are mirrors out there that are non scratch, that are scratch proof that they bought out. I know, Acteon bought some out a little while ago that are scratch resistant for that exact reason because suddenly there is a niche market that requires something that doesn’t scratch and rightly so.

So in terms of, not, in terms of not having ’em scratch, I wouldn’t put them into ultrasonic baths for starters, purely because the way the cavitation works, and if you’ve got an ultrasonic bath. Say like a hygeia three or something that works on an incredibly high frequency and that has an incredibly vigorous cavitation to it that can actually create some pitting in there, so you wouldn’t wanna put it in there.

[Jaz]
And that’s overkill because really, a lot of the times the mirror’s not even touching any part mouth. This is hovering above the teeth. 

[Pete]
Well, this is the thing. So when we look at the UK, we have no distinction between an invasive and a non-invasive instrument. And what I mean by that is whether it’s gone subgingivally, or whether it’s just gone into like a, whether it’s just gone into the mouth. Okay. They are all classed as invasive. So it goes through the same process, the cleaning, the sterilization, the storage, and so forth. Even if the instrument hasn’t been used, it goes through the full process.

Whereas in many parts of Europe, they’ll have that distinction. So mirrors are a prime example. In Germany, for example, mirrors non-invasive. They just need to be clean. They don’t need to be sterilized. And there’s other markets that are like that, that have that clear distinction. UK, we just have belt and braces.

Everything goes through the full process. Now, ultimately, when it comes to cleaning, you’d wanna be cleaning it with a soft bristle brush. You don’t wanna be cleaning it. I would even probably acid, I would even probably move away from using a bristle brush even on it. Even on that lens because you don’t wanna be scratching it.

So I would use sort of a water-based wipe, for example, to wipe that end. Something in a non linting cloth is quite soft and that is a cleaner and a disinfector at the same time. So it’d be a water-based cleaning disinfector products. There’s loads of them on online. 

[Jaz]
Can you just name a couple of brands?

[Pete]
Bio Cleanse Ultra is one of them. That’s a water-based product. Schülke & Mayr Mikrozid AF, they do one which is, or Micro Z, which is a water-based cleaner and disinfect. 

[Jaz]
These just wet wipes. The fancy wet wipes. 

[Pete]
So these are wet wipes? Yeah, these are wipes that you would just wipe over that because as you say, it’s a non-invasive instrument. It’s not gone subgingivally, it’s literally just gone into the mouth to look at the area. So cleaning disinfection is slightly lower. So you certainly wouldn’t wanna scrub it because that’s where you’re gonna create scratches on the mirror. You certainly don’t wanna place it into an ultrasonic bath- 

[Jaz]
And classically, what I see, which breaks my heart, is the box that we have where the nurses use to transport to the decon room. And that’s like full of probes and sharp instruments. That is just put over that, and that’s how they get scratched. So we need to also isolate the mirror away from the other instruments. So what’s the best way there? 

[Pete]
So you’ve got a couple of options. I mean, ultimately if you can keep it completely separated in its own box, that would be the first, because you don’t want it to come into, they do come with any other instrument. 

[Jaz]
Metal brackets, I think like a little bracket boxes. 

[Pete]
You can get brackets for them. Yeah, you can get them. Or the other way, slightly less expensive would be to wrap the head in gauze or something. Like a sterile gauze pack. And just put it in between gauze just to protect it. ‘Cause you can sterilize it in that as well. So sterilize it in the gauze, in the actual sterilizer and do the whole lot in one.

[Jaz]
This is golden. Okay. So this is what I want to, so I’ve read, yeah, I’ve read colleagues, helping colleagues that the way to do it would be. To get some sort of like I don’t know, a lint cloth or something. Wrap the mirror in the cloth, then put that in the autoclave pouch. Now I didn’t, I never tried it because I don’t wanna be the guy who’s on BBC who put it on autoclave and that lint cloth went 137 degrees and then the fire happened. So this is where I always wanted clarity. 

[Pete]
I would use a sterile gauze or a non-sterile gauze, a surgical gauze that you’re using in the pocket. Stick the head in between it. Put that into the pouch, in the autoclave. Yeah. 

[Jaz]
Okay. 

[Pete]
That would probably be recommended. ‘Cause the thing is with- 

[Jaz]
That’s like gauze sandwich. Like gauze mirror gauze. 

[Pete]
Yeah. Or even get the gauze and just ply it. So you can slightly open it in between and stick the head in between just to give it a bit of protection. Put that in the pouch, stick that in the autoclave. And then because the gauze itself will be poorer.

So the gauze, so the steam will go through the gauze as well as going through the pouch that’ll sterilize the mirror. And then you’ve got the drying function on the sterilizer afterwards that will then dry the pouch and it’ll dry the gauze and it’ll dry the mirror. So it go right the way through. And then you can store that afterwards. 

[Jaz]
I mean why use sterile gauze? That’s expensive way. Just use non-sterile gauze. 

[Pete]
Just use non-sterile gauze. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t need to use sterile gauze. If you’ve got sterile gauze in, great. But yeah, the cheaper way of doing it, just get non-sterile gauze. Or you can use lint free cloth. A lint-free wipe, lint-free cloth, something that you are using to dry the instruments. You could use that. That’s even less expensive just to put over the head. Stick it in the pouch so it keeps it in place. ‘Cause you don’t want it loop moving around. 

[Jaz]
So lint-free cloth and then sterilize healthy and the autoclave is not gonna cause a fire.

[Pete]
It’s not gonna cause a fire. No, no. It is not gonna cause a fire. You won’t get any fire from that at all. You don’t forget you’re sticking paper in there. You are sticking a paper pouch in there. The only time it’ll ever create a fire. And I’ve seen this happen. Oh my goodness. A couple of times is, if the heating element is exposed, which on a lot don’t really see it much on modern autoclaves to be honest.

They’ve housed them all now. So the heating elements tend to be housed, which is basically an element where there’s the water comes over it then heats it up, and that’s where you get your steam coming out of. In some older autoclaves, those heating elements were exposed. And what can happen is if you put your tray in and the pouch touches that heating element, that’s where it can create a fire.

And I’ve seen that happen before. Or you get tarnishing on the paper, you get a burn marks on the paper where it’s heated it up. But yeah, other than that, no, it’s not gonna create a fire. 

[Jaz]
Brilliant. We now have a nice way to keep those mirrors scratch free, although buying mirrors that are scratch free, take my money. That sounds like I didn’t know they existed, so, my next round, I’m sure they come at a premium, but, for someone who’s obsessed about good quality photography, I think I’ll be looking into that. Next question for you, Pete. I’m really enjoying this so much.

Actually, I never thought, ’cause on this software that we used to record podcast, I have this little marking button and every time I, something is like really good I press, so this is like the record for 2025 so far of how many times I’ve marked it. So thank you so much, Pete, for covering these, but us dentists, we’re stupid when it comes to, well, I am anyway, when it comes to, to decon. 

[Pete]
You have too many other things to think about this that is kind of lasting. 

[Jaz]
Very polite of you, sir, thank you. 

[Pete]
Now you’ve got far too many things to think about. 

[Jaz]
Appreciate it. So distilled water. Distilled water. It’s piqued my interest because, I’m in the realm now of using ultrasonic, mini bath to clean my ceramics for watching the hydrofluoric acid etch off and getting the nice etch pattern and improving my bond strengths. So for that, I need to use distilled water.

Now, distilled water, you can buy quite cheap in in gallons. Are there any other requirements for practice to be using distilled water? So I don’t need to buy my own, I can just nip at the decon room and take some of that one, because from what I’ve seen that seems to be reverse osmosis and that’s different.

[Pete]
Yeah. You’ve got two types of water. You have either that you can use distilled or reverse osmosis. Both of them are very different. So distilled water uses obviously the distillation process. So superheated evaporates it re evaporates back down, and that’s where you get your distilled water. The problem with distilled water is you have to use distilled water incredibly quickly.

So no longer than sort of 24, 48 hours, it’s got to be used within, because what happens with distilled water is when it goes through that distillation process is, that freshly distilled water when it comes in contact with oxygen, it draws in carbon dioxide, which then makes that water acidic.

Then anything it comes into contact with it absorbs it. It’s a natural absorber, distilled water. It’s a bit like the distillation process of whiskey, for example, if you’ve ever seen that happen when they freshly distilled whiskey, it’s clear. But what they do then is they take that freshly distilled whiskey, they put it into a soft wood, a redwood oak, or a cask.

Leave it there for six months to a year or 15 years if you’ve got the good single stuff. And then what happens is it draws in the color of the wood, and it also takes on the flavor of the wood. It’s a natural absorber, which means distilled water has, and that’s what the document talks about when it talks about using water as quickly as possible. It’s talking about distilled water. 

[Jaz]
But in terms of my use of it, let’s say I get a small bottle, right? Let’s say I get like a one liter bottle, right? Yeah. Now I open the cap, I pour literally, I only need a small amount to do what I need to do with my ceramic. I close the lid again. I can still continue using that bottle. Or are you trying to say like some sort of food you buy, you have to use within seven days? The whole bottle? 

[Pete]
You would find, if you look at it when that bottle is opened, you need to use it within 24 to 48 hours. 

[Jaz]
Wow. 

[Pete]
Because what will happen is that as soon as you have opened up that bottle, oxygen’s going in, it’s absorbing carbon dioxide, gonna absorb more. And it’ll absorb the impurities from the actual plastic that’s in the bottle as well. If you want to prefer preserve it to store it longer, put that water in the fridge. 

[Jaz]
Ah, okay. 

[Pete]
At about three or four degrees. That cold temperature will slow any of that process down altogether.

[Jaz]
Brilliant. 

[Pete] 

So I would say you put it in the fridge, RO water on the other hand is completely different. 

[Jaz]
Yeah. That’s obviously uses, that’s not suitable for ceramics ultrasonic at all. 

[Pete]
RO water is. RO water you can use. 

[Jaz]
I thought RO water had all this minerals still in there and that would interfere with it.

[Pete]
RO water, reverse osmosis water utilizes different filter levels to draw all of the minerals out of the water altogether. So what you find with RO water, as you’ll have several different either three filters or five filters. So there’ll be a carbon filter that’s drawing carbon out of the water, a magnesium outta the water.

You’ve got sediment filters that are taking all the impurities out. They’ll go down generally to a 0.3 micron filter, which the smallest waterborne pathogen organism in water is 0.3 microns. So nothing is lower than that. So that’s all of those minerals stripped out of it. And then what you end up with is basically pure water that’s got nothing in it at all.

[Jaz]
So, distilled water is less pure. So, so reverse osmosis is more pure than distilled. 

[Pete]
Distilled water when it’s in its initial stage is purer than RO water. But RO water can be stored for longer. Because RO water isn’t an absorber, it doesn’t absorb everything it comes into contact with.

It’s a way of achieving distilled level water, but through filtration. Through a series of filters and what you find, you’ll have different grades of filters that the water will be passed through with the very fine RO membrane being that 0.2, 0.3 micron filter that the water has then pushed through.

The problems with RO in the way that it works is it has a very high dump rate. So for every liter of water you put through an RO system about 700 to 800 mils of it is wasted. It’s only about two to 300 mils that’s actually used for RO water, usable room. 

[Jaz]
So I’m obviously using it in the clinic for the ultasonic bath in a very small amounts for my ceramic. But in the decon room, which water is king, what’s being used? 

[Pete]
RO water is becoming more of a king than distilled water. I think distilled water, historically is what we’ve always used. We’ve always used distilled water. Now, the downside to distilled water, as I said, is you’ve gotta use it really quickly. It also generates a lot of heat. 

[Jaz]
And that’s pre-purchase or is it produced in the decon room? 

[Pete]
Produced with a water distiller. Produced with water distillers in the decon room. Distillers with a distiller kettle that are, then you pull water in the kettle, it then super heats it, and you get your distilled water coming out the other side.

[Jaz]
And that is like you said, with RO water, you put a a liter in. You only get a small amount out. What’s the ratio like with distilled water? 

[Pete]
Distilled water? It’s probably slightly best than that. Most virtually all of the water you put in, you are using 95, 90% of it for distilled water. So the ratios are far in favor of distilled water. However, distillation process takes a lot longer to produce the water that you need. Hence, they’re always left on, they generate loads of heat, they use a lot of electricity and also you have to use the water straight away. RO water, which is why it’s kind of becoming more and more favorable is you have RO water on tap.

Generally they all come with big storage containers. So you’ve generally got a five liter up to, I think one manufacturer does a 70 liter container that you’ve got your RO water satin, and you can just draw from it. All the time. As soon as the system then gets down to a certain level, the RO unit then starts to produce more water.

So it’s constantly keeping that tank up to date. They use a lot less electricity, they use nothing. They don’t generate any heat, so they are more sustainable. The only downsides to RO water is if your practice is water metered. So if you pay per liter of water that you have rather than a fixed rate, RO water can become incredibly expensive because of the debt.

[Jaz]
That is a top pearl, I think. 

[Pete]
So if you are fixed in terms of your water, what you pay each quarter or each six months or whatever, RO water is definitely the way to go. Definitely the way to go. 

[Jaz]
No, but you said RO water’s the one that’s- Oh, if you’re fixed. If you are metered.

[Pete]
If you’re fixed. If you are metered, yeah. RO water becomes incredibly expensive if you’re metered because it has such a high dump rate. 

[Jaz]
Got it. And for me, the big change is obviously like, I’d like to use distilled water ’cause that’s what the manufacturers say for the ceramics, ideally to use, either that or ethanol. Therefore, I’m gonna go into my decon room and see, are we producing any, I don’t need to buy any bottles. If you’re producing fresh distilled water. 

[Pete]
If you’re producing distilled water, I mean, I’m very, to be honest, Jaz, I’m pretty sure the practice will be, I mean, I would consult with the manufacturers. I can’t see from a decon perspective with any ceramics personally, any reason why RO can’t be used. Because the two fundamental waters that we have to use within dentistry for everything is distilled or RO. And the only reasons why we are using those two types of water is because both of them are deemed good quality water.

Secondly, they have no minerals in them. They’ve got no deposits, they’ve got no lime scale, they’ve got no magnesium, nothing like that. And thirdly, they have no endotoxins in them. So they’ve got no bacteria in them or negative gram organisms in them at all. They are both deemed good quality water. So I can’t see a reason why it can’t be used.

But it very much depends on the manufacturers. It is very dependent on what, they may have a reason as to why that’s the case. 

[Jaz]
Yeah. I’ll look into that and I’ll add it in and add on. Pete, you’ve answered so many questions. There’s so many unanswered one, so you must come back for a part two one day, but for now, I just like to highlight like the wonderful work you do, in terms of consulting practices, consulting teams.

I know you do programs for like practice visits and kind of like doing a bootcamp to make sure that everyone’s doing the right way. Please tell us how can you support our community, our practices? How can they book on to get some advice from you basically? 

[Pete]
So WhatsApp’s probably the easiest way to contact me, to be honest. I would go through WhatsApp. I would encourage all of your teams to join our Facebook group. We’ve set a Facebook group up. We set it up about a couple of years ago. IPC support by Decon Pete. It’s a private group. Get the teams to join up. We’ve created it as a safe space for everybody to ask those questions that they may feel stupid.

I don’t think any stupid is a stupid question. Any question is a stupid question. But we created this group as a safe space for like. For like people to communicate, to help each other, to support each other, in all things decon. And ultimately, we are there to help everybody to keep safe.

So yeah, either visit a website, WhatsApp, or, or join the group. We get a lot of questions on the group, and if I can’t answer something, there’s always somebody in that group. I’ve got CQC inspectors in there. I’ve got various other inspectors in there that they help and help the community. We try and help as many people as we can.

[Jaz]
Well, it’s been very clear from recording this episode with today that you are here to help and you are a friend of the profession, so thank you so much for what you give. 

[Pete]
Perfect. No problem. 

Jaz’s Outro:
Point everyone to the Facebook group, and to a website as well. And, I look forward to learning more from you. That was absolutely fantastic Pete, thank you so much. 

Well, there we have it guys, thank you so much for listening all the way to the end on a decontamination episode. Can you believe it that you just listened to or watched through entire hour of content on decontamination? Now, please tell me, was that useful?

Is it useful to go through these traditionally boring core CPD topics in the style that we did to help you, putting the targets and everything aside, are these less sexier topics helpful? I would love to know if you can comment and hit the like button. Please do scroll down if you’re watching on the Protrusive Guidance platform, answer the quiz and get your all important shiny golden core CPD.

This is the one that’s mandatory. This is the one that we have to do a big fat tick for this year’s decontamination training. If you want to get CP or CE credits for the episodes that we do, including this one, and check out all our courses, like if you wanna start doing Vertipreps or sectioning teeth, or doing rubber dam or watching through entire videos of step-by-step lithium disilica, onlays, and all sorts of procedures. We’ve got them on the Protrusive Guidance app. Check out protrusive.co.uk/ultimate. That’s protrusive.co.uk/ultimate. I know you’re gonna love the content, but what you’ll love even more if you’re not on there is the community, the community of the nicest and geekiest dentist in the world.

So thank you to all the Protruserati for supporting what we do over the years, and so empowering us to do these kind of episodes and there’s so much more planned where this came from. Thank you again. I’ll catch you same time, same place next week. Bye for now.