KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Beginning Monday, depending on location, some Kansas City-area dentist offices can reopen with limitations.
It's the first of several stages of a reopening process that is likely to take months. Some who work in the dentistry field think it's a little too soon for patients to return.
"I just don’t feel safe, and I don’t feel that’s in the best interest of our patients right now,” dental hygienist Karen Davis told 41 Action News.
Davis was a dental hygienist before losing her job at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She's worried about those who are returning.
"If you think about what we do as a profession, with being so close to people’s open mouths, how do we go to all these weeks of quarantine to just opening up a dental office like regular again, that doesn’t make any sense,” Davis said.
Davis claims some offices don’t have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep employees safe.
"We realize that those particles are small enough to get through those masks and we didn’t realize how long the aerosols could stay actually in the air and so all of those things are things we are thinking about now in dentistry,” Davis said.
To calm those fears, dentist like Dr. Kory Kirkegaard collaborated with Dr. Baron Grutter in Gladstone to create masks and head gear for dentists to protect staff.
“You heat it up a little bit because its moldable and bendable and then when you heat it, you mold it against your face. It will then mimic a seal you will find on a N95,” said Kirkegaard, a dentist and owner of The Art of Dentistry.
Kirkegaard will open up on May 11, and it will entail some changes.
"As far as procedures go, we’re spacing everything out a lot more, getting more distance and more time in between patients so that way we have time to thoroughly get the rooms turned over,” Kirkegaard said.
The American Dental Association has created a return-to-work toolkit and it lists offices to consider "implementing a soft launch for their practices with their dental teams, and the discussion and practice of new strategies before welcoming patients."
It’s a guidebook Kirkegaard is using as a resource as his office begins to accept patients again.
"We’re looking at what’s better now that we’re kind of transitioning in to ways to protect ourselves more efficiently and just better for everybody,” Kirkegaard said.
Dentist offices interested in getting some of the new masks should contact Shannon Hill at The Art of Dentistry: https://theartofdentistryop.com/.
