Getting materials and blood off instruments

Often i'll find that the flat plastic I use to pack cord or teflon will have blood on it after I set it down. Also, the instruments to place materials e.g a base applicator or plastic instruments will often have GIC and composite resin caked onto them after use. Ideally your dental assistant will be trained to immediately wipe these clean to avoid them setting or drying onto the instruments. These are the things they can be doing to keep themselves occupied while you are working on the patient. When they aren't suctioning, curing, or mixing materials they should be constantly reorganising your instrument tray and cleaning the instruments off.

However, in a busy situation or when the staff are not well trained, dried blood or GIC can be detrimental to the procedures. blood can be transferred onto the surface of your composite and stain/contaminate your restoration. GIC will obviously roughen the surface of the instrument and will cause composite to stick to it. Worse yet it can dislodge into the restoration and be very difficult to remove. This is most frustrating when it is just as you have gotten the form of your restoration right and you have to dig half the composite out to remove the GIC.

When you or your assistant sees a dirty instrument, it is good practice to clean it off. It is amazing what a little bit of water on a gauze can do to clean dirty instruments off. A wet gauze will clean most blood stains and recently set GIC off. However, if the material is set hard it may need to be scrubbed off with a wire brush in steri and a new instrument should be provided for the meantime. bonding resin that has been set can be cleaned off by dipping it in a dish of alcohol and wiping with a gauze or lint free cloth. The cleanest instrument surface possible will be the most efficient in the placement and handling of composite resin.