Infection Control and OSHA-Related Safety Obligations
This section covers the infection-control and worker-safety standards Nevada expects a dental office to meet, and how those standards appear in jurisprudence questions.
Standard precautions
Nevada expects compliance with CDC infection-control guidance and OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard. Treat all patients as potentially infectious. Use gloves, masks, eye protection, and gowns as indicated; perform hand hygiene before and after patient contact; avoid recapping needles and use safety devices. Sterilize critical instruments with an autoclave or approved method, and use heat-sensitive indicators plus biological spore testing at the required interval. Disinfect surfaces and maintain separate clean and dirty areas.
OSHA obligations
Employers must have an exposure control plan, offer hepatitis B vaccination, provide PPE at no cost, train staff annually, maintain a sharps injury log, and follow hazard communication and labeling rules. Training and exposure records must be kept. The Board can discipline a licensee for unsafe practice even if OSHA does not inspect.
Worked example
An office's weekly spore test is positive. The correct response is to stop using that sterilizer, reprocess affected loads where possible, service the unit, and retest until negative; simply running the cycle twice is not adequate. Document the event and notify the dentist responsible.
Traps
Don't rely on chemical indicators alone; biological monitoring is the check on sterilization failure. Don't let unlicensed staff design the infection-control program. "We've never had a problem" is not a defense; the standard is compliance, not outcome.