2025 APIC and ADS Dental Series

Word of mouth was that our members wanted to hear more about IPC and oral health! APIC's partnership with ADS (previously OSAP) is back! Join us for a  series focusing on infection prevention and control in the Dental setting.

See webinars in this series below. Please note, you will be registering for all webinars in this series. Each webinar offers 1 continuing education credit, totaling 4 credits for the series.

Clostridium difficile: Perils of a (Dentist) Survivor

CE: 1/IPU: 1 

Wednesday, January 15 , 2025 @ 1 pm ET 

Kirsten Roling, DDS

After surviving a Clostridium difficile infection caused by a dental procedure – this dentist is sounding the alarm about an infection that is under-recognized by the dental profession and nearly ended her life.

This webinar will discuss how to apply key principles and develop strategies for infection control and prevention of C. difficile infection within the dental practice, including administrative controls, environmental cleaning, and antimicrobial stewardship.

Learning Objectives:

Review the pathogenesis of C. difficile.

Reduce the incidence of C. difficile through antibiotic stewardship.

Implement a quick action plan for any dental practice to mitigate risk.

Biofilms Inside and Out (of You)

CE: 1/IPU: 1 

Wednesday, April 16 , 2025 @ 1 pm ET 

Nancy Dewhirst, RDH

Beyond oral plaque and dental waterlines, microbial biofilms are interesting and important! Let’s use biofilm science to explore the role of biofilms in various chronic and resistant infections as well as balanced health. Identify sources of biofilms in fluids, equipment, and natural or built environments, and controllable routes of exposure. Linking oral, systemic and environmental biofilms with personal susceptibility provides context for dental water safety standards. 

 Learning Objectives:

Understand the microbial and physical nature of biofilms that contribute to chronic and resistant infections. 

Identify and discuss biofilm diseases. 

Explore strategies to manage dental office reservoirs for biofilms.

C-Qual Site Visits: Internal Site Visits to Improve Process and Practice

CE:1/IPU:1 

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 @ 1 pm ET 

Lisa Bozzetti, DDS, and Sarah Deines, PharmD, BCACP, CPHQ

In 2018, Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center began internal site visits known as "C-Qual" (Compliance and Quality Assurance). Visits are considered an "everybody teach, everybody learn" opportunity, with findings shared with site leaders and senior leaders across the organization. The goal is to improve patient care & safety and ensure compliance with program requirements across our 20 community-based patient care locations. Multiple systems changes and successes have resulted from this twice-a-year internal site visit program. Although C-Qual visits cross multiple departments at Virgina Garcia, the process for surveying and addressing dental compliance are the emphasis of this webinar.

C-Qual promotes continuous survey readiness activities through structured, repeating, internal site visits that cross multiple healthcare service lines (medical, dental pharmacy) and was developed in response to inconsistent processes across clinic sites for programs with compliance requirements leading to underperformance during HRSA and state site visits, staff confusion and risk to patient safety. Creating an interdisciplinary, ongoing, internal site visit process allowed our organization to measure current state of practice across over 20 patient care locations, provide education on program requirements, identify areas of common concern across locations that needed centralized resources, and provide ongoing check-points for leaders to see progress over time. Site visits include multiple staff and leaders to review multiple programs in a short site visit. The team includes 6 to 8 "site visitors" who each review a different clinical program or area of compliance during a 1 hour visit with a 30 min report out to site leaders. For each C-qual visit, the team of reviewers document their findings and suggestions and report to site leadership teams before leaving the clinic. Over the past 6 years we have observed multiple improvements in our clinical program compliance, greater readiness for external audits, and implementation of organization-wide process improvement.

C-Qual visits have significantly strengthened the Virginia Garcia dental program by identifying key areas where current processes needed improvement. The assessments not only guided the team in making necessary changes but also has enhanced the ability to track and maintain compliance with OSHA and CDC regulations internally. As a result, dental care is safer for patients and team members.

Learning Objectives:

Implement a continuous readiness internal site visit process across dental clinics and other service lines (when applicable) and multiple patient access locations in community-based settings.

Integrate team members into a regularly scheduled site-visit structure to maximize staff, leader and program learning.

Identify needs and develop process improvement plans based on data collected during internal site visits.

Opening a New Hospital Dental Suite: What Your IP Wants You to Know

CE:1/IPU:1 

Wednesday, October 15, 2025 @ 1 pm ET 

Margaret Gilman, MAS, CIC, FAPIC

This presentation will review the development and opening of a new dental suite inside of a pediatric hospital. Differences between community dentistry and hospital-based dentistry will be reviewed, specifically the requirements and regulations for each, as it is vital to understand why a hospital based dental practice is so vastly different. After that groundwork is laid, the presentation will begin with a background of the hospital’s dental practices, highlighting the growth not only of the clinical program but also of the infection control knowledge. Over time, the program evolved from having a community dentistry mindset to a hospital-based mindset when it comes to instruments and following instructions for use, preventative maintenance, and water management.

The presentation will pivot away from background to the development and construction of the new suite, in which details around the design of the suite, the physical construction of the suite, and the post-construction, pre-opening of the suite. Successes are highlighted, along with opportunities for improvement. The majority of the presentation will focus on the post-construction, pre-opening phase, as the majority of the dental and IP partnerships occur in this phase. Instruments will make or break your relationship between IPs and Dental suites and specific examples will be provided of constructive conflict around instrument such as mouth mirrors. Best practices for ensuring appropriate purchasing and approval of instruments, along with ensuring accurate and feasible instructions for use, are presented. Additional consultation and partnership between IP and dental suites would be the creation and oversight of new standard operating procedures, competencies, and pathways for all equipment and instruments, since the route for transporting soiled instruments for reprocessing will have to change when the physical location changes. The final focus is around processes, ensuring equipment and instruments are cared for in a highly reliable manner and a standardized documentation template is presented.

Conclusions drawn will include the importance of the IP and RN relationship, especially in hospital based dental suites, the criticality of the IPs involvement in instrument purchasing and policy development, and the recognition of the regulatory differences between community dentistry and hospital-based practices. The integration of Infection Preventionists and infection prevention practices in dental suites will lead to more successful processes and increase patient and staff safety.

Learning Objectives:

Recognition of the importance of the relationship between Infection Prevention and Dental Suites.

Identify the regulatory differences between hospital-based and community-based dental practices.

Articulate the role of Infection Prevention in dental suites, with a focus on instruments and standard operating procedures.

Continuing Education (CE) Credit: 

In support of improving patient care, The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. (APIC) is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. 

 Nursing: 

• APIC designates this activity for 4 Nursing Contact Hours 

Physicians: 

• APIC designates this live course activity for a maximum of 4 PRA Category 1 Credits™ 
• Physicians should claim only the credits commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. 

IPUs: 

• APIC designates this activity for 4 infection prevention unit(s). 
• For more information, please see https://www.cbic.org/CBIC/Recertify/Recertification-by-Continuing-Education.htm