As British Columbia moves through phase two of its business reopening plan, dental services including hygiene care are now available at various clinics around town - and it may be a little different from what you're used to. 

Dr. Andrew Macdonnell of Kelowna's Advance Dental Group says it was a very fast-moving exercise to shut the clinic down and find innovative ways to still provide support to old and new patients. 

"We had experienced a very rapid onset of going from completely open to completely closed, and so when we first got the notification and that came in we quickly had a staff meeting and made some real fast decisions about how fast we’re going to have to close down.

"Once we closed I kept my telephone number available to all my patients or to emergencies that called, so I was able to field phone calls, and patients were able to send in pictures of their teeth to tell me what was going on, I was able to interview them on the phone, and we were able to help a lot of patients - not only our existing patients that we had, but also new patients that had called in that couldn’t get a hold of their dentist or other dentists in the area, and make the appropriate suggestions and direct them to the appropriate place if they had a severe emergency and needed help."

One of the most important aspects of patient care during the shutdown was simply giving them someone to talk to, says Macdonnell, and help alleviate any concerns they may have.

"For something that’s maybe a mild discomfort but the patient thinks its more serious, you can really help that patient just by talking to them on the phone. In most cases if they did have something that was an infection starting, we could prescribe antibiotics, painkillers over the phone and take care of them that way."

In preparation for reopening, the team focused strongly on putting special measures into place to ensure the safety of both staff and patients, says Macdonnell.

These include touchless hand washing stations, new sterilization equipment, hospital grade disinfection protocols, pre-treatment oral rinse, the removal of magazines and toys from the common area and clear Perspex barriers.

"We want to make sure we’re treating patients who are healthy, so we’ll have a pre-screening form that allows us to determine if they have a fever, if they have any sniffles, or colds, anything like that.

"Once they fill out their pre-screening form, the hygienist or dental assistant would take them into the back and they’ll do a pre-rinse ... you'll notice that the hygienist will be wearing probably N95 masks with another mask over top and a face shield. It’s not required right now, so we can go back to the normal PPE we had before the pandemic, but we want to exercise an abundance of caution.

"We’re not going to generate as many aerosols as we used to, so that means there will be more hand scaling as opposed to using ultrasonics. It may take a little bit longer and we appreciate the patients understanding that. It’s going to go a long way to helping get back to where we used to be, but it’s going to take some time."

Despite recent talk of dental offices adding patient surcharges to cover the cost of PPE, Macdonnell says they have no intentions of applying one. 

"I think that everybody is suffering financially, especially people who have been off work, and we will share the burden with our patients as well."

The next phase of reopening BC businesses, which will include movie theatres and spas, is expected to be at least three weeks away.