 Hello everybody, Andrew Meisky here. So let's talk about sterilization and infection control. So there are a couple things that I have been using. I've been in practice now or I've been in the dental profession for about 15 years but now that I have my own dental hygiene practice. I find I like certain things more than others so let's talk about that a little bit. And the proper steps for infection control in your reprocessing area. So I will actually be doing a video within the next few days where I'm going to walk you guys through my reprocessing area. So how I handle all of my equipment, how I package things, how I disinfect, how I sterilize everything so that will make a little bit more sense. But for starters, I just kind of want to show you guys what I use. So did you guys know that they have a brush that you can put in the sterilizer. So I love this because I don't have an ultrasonic cleaner. So I don't pre clean my instruments before I, before I put them in the sterilizer. So I don't do that in the ultrasonic but I use my auto clavable brush. So I sort of brush all of the extra stuff off into the sink. And that just means that I don't have to have that like chemical filled ultrasonic cleaner. And with COVID now they're actually saying they don't want us using that because that's just more chemicals creating aerosols so I use this. And this means because here in Ontario, if we are to use a brush to pre clean our instruments, we need to throw out that brush after each use or after every day there's a fine line but I don't like throwing things out if it's not necessary. So I bought this one. It was maybe 1499 so I have to double check the price, but I can put it in the sterilizer after or sort of in each load, you know, basically, so they're really really handy and lint free cloths. So what I do is I pre clean everything off of the instruments with this I rinse and then dry with a lint free cloth. If you put wet instruments into your sterilizer, they might not sterilize properly and or they come out wet. And then if the package is wet as they're coming out it's technically contaminated with the air. So we're not supposed to use them so remember, make sure to put your instruments through the full cycle so they do not come out wet. But again, more importantly, make sure to dry them off first before packaging them in a lint free cloth and guess where these are from the dollar store in fact you can even cut them. You can cut them because I don't use this full thing for like my drawing like I would cut this little square and that's what I would use when they get too dirty, throw them in the wash on its own like I would not put this in my washing machine with my regular clothes or towels or something but on their own to completely sterilize it in your washing machine, why not or just throw them out and buy new ones it's totally up to you. And then, so you guys so what I wanted to show you, since I'm talking about those packages so much. There are different types of packages so look at this. So, upside down. So these were by Henry shine, and these are by max ill. I like these ones and I'm not talking about the size I'm just kind of talking about the companies which I probably shouldn't mention companies I'm sorry. But I want to say I like the ones by max ill because they have an internal indicator and an external indicator so you don't necessarily need one of these little strips which is a type five indicator. You don't necessarily need that depending on what you're sterilizing inside each package if you had a pouch that wasn't as. As good with the indicators then you would need one of these inside each load each package sorry, but I don't with this. So let me show you see how it says EO. There's EO and S so you always want those to change color after sterilizing. If they don't, it means it wasn't sterilized, but let's read the side package here it says class for chemical indicator meets the requirements. So that's what you want, but this one doesn't have a class for indicator with it. So in most cases you will need something like this inside each pouch as well. It's not the end of the world it's not like these are expensive in fact they come like this in a lot of packs, but if you don't need one you don't need one so I like to spend a little bit more money to get max ill I don't know the price I'll have to double check. So what I'm going to do you guys as I put the instruments in here. I obviously close it up, but I still put a class five in each load. So, if you're watching this and maybe you're a new student or even a patient you might be wondering what are all of these different classes. It's probably over your head at this point but all of these different things just basically tells us whether that load of instruments is sterilized or not. So let's change color and so do these color changing circles on the package, extremely important the instruments going here. So then that way we will open this up in front of patients and they can see that it's been in here inside sterilized, but that's not all we need a sport test. So many of you guys who haven't seen one of these before so scores kill everything so you know if this sport is dead after sterilizing which is inside and you know it's killed everything and these are sterilized. So one of these needs to go in every single load. In some cases depending on what you're sterilizing you want to put it inside a pouch here, but in every single load, just to keep it simple. Okay, and what we do which I should have brought another one I'm sorry, but we would take another one of these sports, and that would be like our test. And then this goes in the sterilizer this will actually go in something else, which will heat it up for 24 hours and if it does not change color so if it's purple. That means it's past and all of these pouches have been sterilized. If it turns yellow, it means it's alive and it hasn't passed and that's not good, basically. Because your sterilizing didn't work, but we have many different means to see if it worked first like these didn't change color. Then we know something didn't work, but that's why these have to sit for 24 hours until this has passed. Does that make sense you guys does that kind of help a little bit. But like I said what I want to do is I'm going to take you guys through my whole reprocessing area to go through everything and then I will show you how this works I will show you how the pouches work. I'll show you how I package everything how I pre clean everything you name it. Before I stop the video I want to say I found these by Maxxl. They are so handy so every time we run a load through our sterilizer we need to log it. So we need to say our you know date, time, load number if it passed, all that other stuff but I love this because you can actually take one of these. And you can peel it off and you can actually stick it right here. Clearly I can't do this straight but isn't that handy you guys I mean here you get the idea. Isn't that so handy so you don't have to take things, keep these in a plastic bag, it's just annoying right. That's why I prefer the Maxxl ones again no I do not work for them I just love the company. I prefer these over these, because for this you can't stick it anywhere like these do the same thing. If it changes color you know it's sterilized but this I can't stick anywhere so I would just tape it to the back. Or put it in as a block big but that's annoying because if you have all of these in a binder. Well it's just kind of annoying to have these loose things like flapping around. Like these because you can just stick them on plain and simple. So just some little fun things for you guys. I hope this helped you guys understand the indicators a little bit and why you need them and what you need them for. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.