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| Year : 2017 | Volume
: 28
| Issue : 6 | Page : 593 |
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| Quality management - Dental office applications |
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Mounir Doumit
Professor of Public Health Dentistry and Former Dean, Lebanese University School of Dentistry; WHO Expert in Oral Health, Beirut, Lebanon; FDI CE Programme Director for the Middle East Region, Geneva, Switzerland
Click here for correspondence address and email
| Date of Web Publication | 18-Dec-2017 |
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How to cite this article:
Doumit M. Quality management - Dental office applications. Indian J Dent Res 2017;28:593 |
For several years, participating to a continuing professional development or to a convention has become almost mandatory.
Today, the quality management is needed as a matter of innovation although not consistently applied by all colleagues.
Do you know “Quality Management?” It is what allows you to work in better conditions by aiming to a better practice, by anticipating problems, and seeking to federate teamwork.
This is also, what ensures the safety of dental practice and comfort for the dental team and all the patients.
The term quality management has often been misused, leading many colleagues to ignore and to systematically neglect this issue. Yet, many companies use it. Its purpose is not to increase profits but rather to improve the working conditions and therefore cohesion.
The quality management means “write what you do, and do what is written” in compliance with the recommendations and standards. Each member of the medical team is involved in a common project for improving the safety and well-being of all, including the patient.
This process is not taught in the dental curriculum, and practitioners often think that they know it instinctively. However, intuition and luck have no place in the role of a leader business manager!
Many standards, repositories, and good practice guidelines, which are updated regularly, govern the practice of the dental profession.
Specifically, the quality management is to write a quality manual that will determine the optimal operation of the dental practice. Thus, for the chain sterilization, it will be a checklist declining all necessary measures for its implementation. First, gestures are observed; actions are noted and compared to bibliographic research, and then, adapted to the structure. Once written, one should test and modify written procedures and adapt them to the practical application to enable continuous improvement of professional practice.
To obtain the team support to the project, it is necessary to explain the added value and hold debriefing meetings monthly. Each time, objectives must first be exposed to allow everyone to prepare his answers; it is also possible to receive training or to use an outside consultant to exert this procedure in a dental office.
The quality management is also called “continuous improvement” because when changing repository or standards, it requires retesting the work, completing or rewriting it.
For the chain of sterilization, we can establish an evaluation grid recognized by several authorities for its simplicity and effectiveness. This is necessary because habit and mechanical repletion of gestures often generate errors and omissions, even among the most motivated team member. Questioning ourself contributes regularly to maintain the performance of the structure.
The entire above context is part of the quality manual that includes preventive actions identified by the team and that the practitioner will perform during the year to avoid accidents and improve working conditions. In fact, the identification and prevention of risks in establishments that receive patients are the responsibility of the business leader, and in our case, the dentist has to apply the mandatory quality management.
Finally, to be sure of being up to date and to deal with the mass of information and new documentations that invade dental offices, it is important not to hesitate to seek data processing to optimize documentary management.
Correspondence Address:
Mounir Doumit
Professor of Public Health Dentistry and Former Dean, Lebanese University School of Dentistry; WHO Expert in Oral Health, Beirut; FDI CE Programme Director for the Middle East Region, Geneva
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijdr.IJDR_237_17
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