Covid-19

Hi everyone,
We hope this letter finds you and your family in good health. Our community has been through a lot over the last few months. After being closed for 2 months, our office reopened the week of May 19th after receiving guidance from the College of Dental Surgeons of BC to do so. While many things have changed in the past couple of months, one thing has remained the same: our commitment to your safety.

Infection control has always been a top priority for us at Johnston Road Dental and you may have seen this during your visits to our office. Our strict infection control processes are made so that when you receive care, it’s both safe and comfortable. Our office follows all infection control recommendations made by BC Public Health, BCCDC (The BC Centre for Disease Control) , The College of Dental Surgeons of BC (CDSBC), and the BC Dental Association (BCDA). We closely follow the activities of these agencies so that we are up-to-date on any new rulings or guidance that may be issued. We do this to make sure that our infection control procedures are current and adhere to each agency’s recommendations.

You may see some changes when it is time for your next appointment. We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff. For example:
Please remain outside the office or in your car and call the office upon your arrival. We will let you know when to enter the office safely.
– Our office may communicate with you beforehand to ask some screening questions. You will be asked those same questions again when you are in the office. We will also be checking your temperature upon arrival to our office.
– We have hand sanitizer that we will ask you to use when you enter the office, which is located to the right once you enter into the reception area or we may immediately bring you to treatment room to wash your hands.
– You will see that our waiting room will no longer offer magazines, children’s toys and so forth, since those items are difficult to clean and disinfect.- High contact surfaces, such as door handles, will be cleaned frequently
– Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients. That might mean that you’re offered fewer options for scheduling your appointment.
– We will be allowing greater time between patients to reduce waiting times for you, as well as to reduce the number of patients in the reception area at any one time.
– We will be wearing the appropriate Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) for the procedures that we are performing. Besides the appropriate masks and gloves, you may see us wearing face shields, hair covers, and gowns (all depending on what procedures we are providing).

We spent the 2 months that we were closed doing renovations to our office to provide a safer environment for us to provide dental care to you. We have enclosed all of our operatories, placing doors on each room. We have also re-worked our ventilation system to create negative pressure treatment rooms. The air can be exchanged in these room every 5 minutes, and we are not reusing that air; we are replacing it with fresh air. This helps protect everyone in the building.

We look forward to seeing you again and are happy to answer any questions you may have about the steps we take to keep you, and every patient, safe in our practice.

Thank you for being our patient. We value your trust and loyalty and look forward to soon welcoming
back our patients, neighbours and friends.

Sincerely,

Dr. Barker and the Johnston Road Dental Team