 Hello everybody, Andrea with Dental L. So I've been a dental professional for 17 years and I do have my own mobile dental hygiene practice. I teach dental professionals all about infection control, sterilization, everything you name it. I do also teach students how to pass the board exam. But in this video today, I wanna give you guys a little recap on sterilizing and why our Dental Hygiene Association is so particular with everything that we now have to write down. Things we have to log. What are the differences between all of the different methods that now we have to do? Talking about score testing, indicators. Why do we do it? How do we do it? I do have many courses where I do explain things further, especially for dental hygienists here in Ontario where we are audited. And we need to make note, we have a practice profile of short answers, templates, check boxes, where we have to submit to our Dental Hygiene Association when we get audited to list exactly how we sterilize, reprocess all of our practices. So just a recap here. So score testing, that is called a biological testing. So why do we need to do this? Depending on what type of sterilizer you have, you should be doing this every day before you start the day. So your spore test should be going into a processing challenging device with an indicator as well. That spore test means that if that spore is killed, then your instruments are sterilized. Because if it can kill that spore, then it's killing everything and anything. But that paper indicator also needs to go into that processing challenging device because that means the sterilizer has reached high heat. High enough heat to sterilize, you would think, but the spore test makes sure. So we're basically testing the sterilizer twice. We're testing it a ton of times actually if you think about it, but dental professionals, dental offices are the safest. Let me tell you that processing challenging device needs to go into the hardest to reach area of the sterilizer. So you don't just throw it in there. You put it at the very back where it's like hardest to reach. So if that spore is killed, the indicator passes after it's sterilized, then any pouch, anything you put in there, you know is sterilized. Give your clients that reassurance that yes, you sterilize, of course, but that it is also being tested and we have so much monitoring. We spend a fortune on all of these tests that we have to do. Even me as a mobile dental hygienist, I have my own sterilizer. I have to buy all of these tests. I have to do all of these tests every time I sterilized. So my patients should feel pretty darn good that we are really making sure because if it kills a spore, it kills everything. But then you have different types of indicators. If you can't quarantine. So quarantining, is that even work? That is when your pouches that have been sterilized needs to, you can't use them yet. You have to put them in a cupboard somewhere and you have to wait for that spore test to pass. So when the spore test comes out of the sterilizer, you don't technically know if it's passed yet. You have to put that spore test into an incubator. Some incubators are 12 hours, some are 24 hours. So those pouches cannot be used. The one that I have is 24 hours. So every time I sterilize, I take out those pouches, the internal indicators basically let me know if it has reached high enough heat. So they are sterilized, but they're not triple checked with the spore test yet until that comes back as passed after 24 hours. So I have to put those pouches aside, which means I had to buy double the amount of instruments so that I can still see patients every day. And that's what dental offices have to do as well. So you have to wait until that has successfully passed. But then there are class fives. That is the highest type of indicator used, very expensive. But if you use those, you are able to use that instrument right away. A lot of dental offices use those for hand pieces only because hand pieces could be $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 in some cases. You're not going to buy 11 of those, okay? Come on. So those you are going to spend more money to get that class five indicator so you don't have to quarantine those and use it right away. Is your head spinning yet? Oh my God, mine is. Every time I teach this, my head is spinning. So that's just kind of a recap of how sterilizing works. The different, I guess, indicators, but please make note that you have to have a logbook as well. You need to be writing all of this stuff down. The type of sterilizer, the time, the date, the low dumber, the temperature that the sterilizer reached at its peak. There are different temperatures for the rubber and plastics cycle. There's different temperatures for the wrapped cycle. You need to make a note of that. You need to make note of if that spore test passed or failed after 12 or 24 hours. Passing, obviously, right? You need to make a note of those indicators. Did they pass or did they fail? Pass, obviously, you would assume, right? And then you have to actually tape or if it's a sticky one, that indicator to the logbook. But your sterilizer also needs to have a USB printable to keep it digitally or printable. So some of the older sterilizers do not, but then that means you have to buy something separate so it actually prints out everything, depending on the type of sterilizer you use. So sorry if this is overwhelming. I tried to do a recap for you, but it's kind of hard without explaining a lot of the things. So if you need help, I do have a mini e-course all about your practice profile where I go through the different type of sterilizing methods and I give you an exact example of how you should be writing that down and what you should be doing for your practice and your practice profile. So if you've been audited, you don't know where to start. You don't know if you're doing the right methods. This course is perfect for you because I can help you. I do also list handpiece disinfecting, sterilizing what you need to know for that. I also talk about all the disinfecting, purging, waterline maintenance, how you need to do that. So it's all about disinfecting, sterilizing, and that reprocessing area in the dental office. And it is also good for mobile dental hygienists such as myself, because I see patients in my own home, you kind of see that patient chair over there, but I am also mobile where I go to other patients' homes, but I have my own sterilization lab downstairs. So I do all of that. So let me know you guys, if you have any questions, thank you so much for watching. Please click like if you like this video that does help me so much. And I look forward to seeing you guys in the next video. Thank you guys so much. Bye for now.