The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the rhythm of many of our daily routines, from grocery shopping to taking our pet to the vet. At Queensboro Plaza Dental Care, your dentist in Long Island City, NY, we’ve found that simply knowing more about the process can ease patients’ concerns about visiting the dentist during the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve engineered the experience to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
Before Your Appointment
To help ensure that patients arriving at our office are healthy, we will contact you before your appointment and ask you some questions about your current health via our convenient online questionnaire. We may also repeat these questions when you arrive to make sure nothing has changed.
Finally, we ask that you limit the number of people you bring with you to your appointment. This could mean leaving your children or spouse at home or allowing older children or a spouse to go into the office alone while you wait outside during their appointment.
During Your Appointment
As of this writing, New York State requires wearing a mask in public, so be sure to wear one before entering our office. We may ask you to wait outside until we’re ready for you, to limit the number of people inside the office. If that is the case, we will stay in contact with you via text message or phone.
Once you enter the office, we will check your temperature and repeat the screening questionnaire. You may notice that we have removed high-touch items from the reception area such as toys, magazines, and coffee station. We will have hand sanitizer available for you to use, and the reception room chairs will be socially distanced. And throughout our office we will have HEPA air purifiers to circulate and clean the shared air.
While in the dental chair, you’ll notice that your dentist and staff will be wearing different protective equipment than you’ve been used to seeing (such as different masks, face shields, and goggles). Before your procedure starts, we will ask you to rinse with a 1.5% hydrogen peroxide rinse to reduce the chance of disease transmission in saliva. Finally, we will augment our use of air/water isolation devices to reduce aerosol spread during your procedure. These additional measures will help to protect both you and the dental team.
After Your Appointment
After your visit, you can expect that our staff will thoroughly disinfect the treatment area with virus-killing disinfectant to prepare for the next patient. We will adjust appointment intervals to account for the extra disinfection time and reduce the risk of passing the illness to others.
If you have developed symptoms of COVID-19 (such as fever, cough, or shortness of breath) within 14 days of your appointment, please contact our office. You may already have been carrying the virus at the time of your appointment, so anyone in close contact with you could be at risk for exposure of the virus.
Do You Need Urgent or Emergency Dental Care in Long Island City?
We offer high-quality family dental care that puts your needs first. We would be thrilled to serve you and your family no matter your dental needs! Contact Queensboro Plaza Dental Care today to set up an appointment.
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