Infection control, sterilization, and public health reporting requirements
What the exam tests
This domain tests infection prevention and public-health reporting: standard precautions, sterilization monitoring, safe sharps and waste handling, and the dentist’s duty to report specified communicable diseases.
Core rules
- Use standard precautions for every patient: hand hygiene, gloves, masks, eye protection, gowns when splatter is likely, and safe injection and sharps practices. Treat all blood and body fluids as potentially infectious.
- Clean, package, and sterilize reusable critical and semicritical instruments. Monitor sterilizers with mechanical indicators, chemical indicators, and biological spore tests; keep logs. A failed spore test requires removing the sterilizer from service, following recall/reprocessing protocols, and documenting corrective action.
- Disinfect environmental surfaces and manage waterlines, suction, and waste according to Board and Department of Health rules. Single-use items are not reused.
- Report reportable communicable diseases and outbreaks to the local health department or New Jersey Department of Health as required. HIV and other sensitive information remain confidential and should be disclosed only as the law permits.
Worked example
An autoclave’s weekly spore test is positive. The office continues using it because the chemical indicator looked normal. That is wrong: the biological monitor is the accepted check on sterilization efficacy. The sterilizer must be taken out of service, affected loads identified, and the problem corrected and retested before reuse.
Traps that cost marks
Disinfection is not sterilization. Lack of symptoms does not remove the need for standard precautions. Do not report only “confirmed” cases if the law requires suspected cases. Do not ignore logs; missing documentation can be treated as missing monitoring.