Updates from Dr. Buxton

Our community has been through a lot over the last few months, and all of us are looking forward to resuming our normal habits and routines. While many things have changed, one thing has remained the same: our commitment to your safety. Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice and you may have seen this during your visits to our dentist office in Bangor. Our infection control processes are made so that when you receive dental care at Maine Family Dental, it’s both safe and comfortable. We want to tell you about the infection control procedures we follow in our practice to keep patients and staff safe.

Our office follows infection control recommendations made by the American Dental Association (ADA), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). We 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 agencies’ 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:

• Our office will communicate with you beforehand to ask some screening questions. You’ll be asked those same questions again when you are in the office.
• We have hand sanitizer that we will ask you to use when you enter the office. You will also find some in the reception area and other places in the office for you to use as needed.
• You may see that our waiting room will no longer offer magazines, children’s toys, coffee station and so forth, since those items are difficult to clean and disinfect. We have also removed all unnecessary items from the patient treatment rooms.
• There will be a plexiglass divider at the front desk to protect both our staff, and patients.
• Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients.
• We will do our best to allow 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.
• Our staff will look a little different. The clinic staff will now be wearing long lab jackets that will be replaced with a clean, fresh one after each patient.
• We have installed high volume suction mouthpieces in all the treatment rooms. The use of these mouthpieces will greatly reduce the aerosol production during your visit.
• We have installed doors on all individual treatment rooms to better isolate patients during treatment and control aerosol disbursement.
• We have replaced our regular keyboards and mice in the treatment rooms with waterproof keyboards with trackpads for an increased level of disinfection.

We have installed individual air purification systems in every treatment room as well as the waiting area. These units will filter out viral and bacterial particles and will completely filter all the air in the entire office every twelve minutes! In addition to these units, we have installed top of the line air filters in our heating and air conditioning system that will filter viral and bacterial particle as well. 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.

As we approach a date when we are able to start seeing patients again for routine dental care in 04401, we will reach out to those of you who have had your appointments cancelled during this unexpected shut down of our office. In the meantime, feel free to contact our office with any questions or concerns. 

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

Sincerely,
Dr. Travis Buxton and Team