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I remember when dental procedures were few and far between, perhaps treating only one or two cases a month. But times have changed! Now, General Practitioners can see three or more dental cases each day.
Having the right tools for any job is paramount to its execution. Have you ever tried undoing a screw with a knife tip because you couldn’t find the screwdriver? Well, the same goes for dentistry. If you don’t have the right instruments, the procedure will become more challenging, and you will lose time.
Your review starts with considering the patients you commonly treat.
Are you a feline-only clinic? Do you treat rabbits along with cats and dogs?
Do you see a spread of small patients (<10kgs) and large patients?
Now look at your instruments—do you have the range of instruments needed to treat the species that you see (yes, they differ between species!)?
Do you have instruments of all sizes to suit your patients? A good example of this is Periosteal Elevators, as there is a fine size that suits cats and small dogs, whereas the standard size is better suited to medium-large breed dogs.
As in theatre, surgical kits are created to suit the common procedures, from Spey Kits to your Orthopaedic Kits. Have your nursing team review your instruments and sort them into various kits.
Here are some examples to get you started:
Setting up these dental-specific kits will not only improve your efficiency throughout the procedure—no more deep diving into a container filled with a mix of instruments—but will also help to improve the set-up time and the time spent reprocessing these instruments.
Following the previous tip, organising instruments into kits will also reduce the time spent cleaning and sterilising instruments as unused instruments will not require cleaning.
Although the number of dental cases treated each day has increased in many practices, often, the number of instruments required to treat those patients has not.
As your dentist does, every patient should be treated with a clean, sterilised set of instruments. This means that either time needs to be allowed for reprocessing the dental kits between patients, the species treated needs to be alternated to allow for the reprocessing of instruments between patients of the same species, or the number of kits we have available to treat our patients needs to be increased.
Dental Instruments are the workhorses in your practice.
Not only are they used multiple times a day, but they are asked to perform some tough extractions!
At the end of every procedure, the instruments should be checked for any signs of wear & tear or damage and replaced. Those instruments requiring sharpening (eg. luxators, elevators, scalers and curettes) should be sharpened correctly, cleaned and sterilised ready for use with the next patient.
Check out iM3’s range of Ergo dental instruments featuring an innovative handle design that provides comfort and soft silicon inserts that provide added grip during use.
iM3 Ergo Winged Elevators and Luxators have handles in two lengths to provide comfort and control for even the smallest hands. Correctly fitting hand instruments saves time, improves cutting ability, increases tactile sensitivity, and improves overall technique and safety.
If you have any questions about new veterinary dental tools, setting up your dental kits, or caring for and maintaining your existing dental instruments, ask them in the Comments section below.
For over 15 years Maggie has worked in small animal general practice and we’re sure she’s a familiar face to many in the industry. Her passion for dentistry led to her obtaining the Diploma of Veterinary Nursing (Dental) and the Veterinary Technician Specialty VTS (Dentistry). Maggie has experience in General Practice Dentistry as well as in Specialty practice having conducted nurse dental clinics and assisting in both general and advanced specialty procedures. As an experienced and qualified trainer, Maggie has provided training in dentistry to veterinary teams both domestically and internationally and brings her contagious passion for dentistry to her role at iM3 in providing training and support to our clients.
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