Cold Sore Policy!

We refuse to treat patients with active cold sores too, not worth the risk. We have educated our principal dentist as he was fine seeing patients with cold sores but the nurses were not.

Thanks for the comments guys! its been most helpful

we are trying to educate from the patients point of view... a poster is ready to go up in the waiting room!

We have a huge sign saying to rebook but my dentist just saw a private patient even though she had cold sore........there is no option for nurses of not to be put at risk.....unfortunately

We always rebook as the danger to blindness being caused from this Virus.

We always rebook as the danger to Blindness could occur if the infection is spread.

We do not treat patients with an active coldsore as the virus is very infectious. If they require emergency treatment we would do minimal until the coldsore has gone to avoid spreading it. we'd also cover it in vaseline before treating for an emergency. If you touch it you could spread it over a pts face/soft tissues and for example if there is a defect in your glove etc it could get onto your own skin, into fingernails etc. We would always re-appoint.

We had patients that would cancel if they had cold sores but a lot of the time the dentists would not see them and asked for them to be rebooked.
So it generally went that if they had cold sores they wouldn't be treated.
Patients were always ok about it, we never had anyone kick off.

Our patients do come in with cold sores sometimes and we have never turned anyone away. We wear gloves and if the cold sore is on the right we will work on the left being carefull not to stretch the lips. Sometimes patients will phone but very rarely and I will say if the cold sore is still weepy then it might be an idea to reappoint you. Most agree as the only reason they are phoning is because they dont wont to come in that day anyway and wont me to say not to come in. Patients are crafty. But at least they have phoned to say so they get a tick in my book as a considerate patient.

I'm updating our cold sore policy

does anyone have any advice?

is it a general "have cold sore no non urgent treatment"

should we display this in the waiting room?