The Compliance Divas Podcast
Our podcast covers current topics such as infection prevention and control, OSHA and HIPAA compliance for dentistry. We discuss the latest regulatory information, answer frequently asked questions and give suggestions for dental practices to make compliance easy and sustainable. The Compliance Divas are a trusted source for consistent, accurate information based upon current guidelines, standards, science, and recommendations.
The Compliance Divas Podcast
#125 Celebrating DICAM with Michelle Lee, OSAP Executive Director
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Join the Divas as they discuss Dental Infection Control Awareness Month (DICAM) with Michelle Lee, Executive Director of the Organization for Safety Asepsis and Prevention (OSAP). Learn more about DICAM and the amazing resources of OSAP. And take advantage of a 50% off for you first year's membership with the code: OSAPgo50.
Welcome.
SPEAKER_02I'm Leslie Cannon. I'm Mary Gavoni.
SPEAKER_01I'm Linda Harvey. I'm Olivia Wan, and together we are the Compliance Divas.
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome to the Compliance Divas Podcast. I'm Mary Gavoni and I will be your moderator for this episode. We bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating the regulatory world to keep you on course. You can subscribe to the Compliance Divas Podcast through your favorite podcast channel or on our website, thecompliancedeevas.com. All the resources we mentioned during this episode can be found on the show notes for the podcast app that you use and on the compliancedeevas.com website. If you have questions, you can submit them by email to support at thecompliancedivas.com. So we are continuing to celebrate DICAM or Dental Infection Control Awareness Month. And we have invited a special guest to be with us today. And she actually is a returning guest and we love her, Michelle Lee, who is the executive director of OSAP, the organization for safety, asepsis, and prevention. And we are so thrilled that you're here with us today, Michelle. Please say hello to our listeners, and then Olivia's got some questions for you.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful. Well, thank you. I am so excited to be back with the Divas. I love this podcast. So thank you, thank you, thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01Michelle, we're glad to have you back. And we are just great fans of OSAP. But for our listeners who are not familiar with OSAP, can you provide them with a little history of OSAP as an organization?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, you know, I've I've said for a long time that OSAP, I think, has been dentistry's best kept secret, but we've grown a lot in the past few years. So I don't know if it's as great of a secret anymore, which is my goal for it not to be a secret. Um, but we are a dental membership association, um, like a lot of associations, the ADA, the ADGHA, the Ortho Association. But what makes us a little different is we are the only dental association that has as our sole focus infection prevention and patient safety education. That's it. And so our membership is very unique because we have clinicians, dentists, hygienists, assistants, we have practice managers, we have consultants like the divas, we have educators. Um, we also have um a lot of public health as well as private practice, as well as DSO, the military. Um, and then we have the manufacturers and distributors of infection control products. And guess what? Everybody's an equal member in our association, which I think is really cool. Um, but the association in 24 will be celebrating its 40th anniversary. Can you believe that? 40 years. And OSAP was started because of HIV and AIDS. And that's when dentistry had to stop, take a look. What do we need to protect ourselves? Because I know some of you can remember when gloves was not a common thing in the dental practice, right? Um, and all of that changed. Um, and things continue to evolve and change, and because the goal is to keep the team members safe as well as our patients safe.
SPEAKER_01That's great information, Michelle. I know that from time to time I'll get someone to reach out to me to tell me, hey, I'd like to do what you do. What should I do? And I tell them, join OSAP. That's where you start to enhance your knowledge and develop your expertise. So we are very excited to have you here. And now I'd like to pass the mic to Linda.
SPEAKER_03Olivia, I couldn't echo your sentiments more. That's joining OSAP is a really important aspect for any compliance consultant. And Michelle, the divas all share your goal of not keeping OSAP a secret any longer. We want to go big. You know the saying, go big or go home, right? We're going big. So I know that OSAP has numerous resources for the dental teams. Could you elaborate on that for us, please, Michelle?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. Um, so I besides having our live events, which we have a annual dental infection control boot camp, um, that's the beginning of the year. We also have an annual conference in the middle of the year, and we have now we have increased the number of webinars we offer, um, which are all the webinars are all free. Um, but our website has really grown. And on the website, there are all kinds of resources, toolkits on every subject you can imagine. And for our members, we have one of the greatest benefits of all, I think, is our ask OSAP section. And besides the thermostat and the dental practice, we know the most debated topic in a dental office is usually infection control, right? I think you all would agree with me on that. And so when you have those questions that come up and you need that answer, you can submit it to Ask OSAP and you get factual documentation. This isn't an opinion, it's not a best practices, it's exactly what the regulations are the guidelines, um, or even where to find the IFU, um, that type of information. Um, so I think that's really, really valuable. Um, we um also have, especially this month during DICAM, we have additional resources. There are scripts on how to talk to your patients about what you do to keep them safe. Um, there are um toolkits specifically on um hand hygiene, dental unit water lines, instrument processing, PPE. Um, and then something we added, um, I guess it's been three years now, um, because we launched it in we launched it in 21, so almost three years, um, is our um dental infection and patient safety educational education platform. And so there are all kinds of free webinars that live on that site. Um, there's also individual sessions from boot camps and annual conferences that if you weren't able to attend, you can go and purchase for a very reasonable fee. I think 15 for members, 30 for non-members, and you can sit in on some of those sessions. Very great information, you know, of course, from some of our leading speakers. Um, so it's all right there at your fingertips. We also have links to um some other free education that we partnered with, um, helped with the CDC, their foundations training. Um, we have links to that training. Um, it sits on the CDC site, but it's an incredible um um online uh training session. You you earn three CEs for completing it, but again, it's foundations of building the safest dental visit. Um, so all kinds of information.
SPEAKER_03Michelle is so impressive, the wealth of information that OSAP continues to develop over its 40-year history and just stays so current. So now more than ever, membership at OSAP and leveraging this information, these tools is fantastic because think about the staffing issues that offices are continuing to face just this year alone in a span of a couple of months. I have three clients who onboarded new sterilization techs with zero dental experience.
SPEAKER_00Which, you know what, and and can we talk about that for a minute? That it scares me because they're putting brand new people who haven't had training right into that sterilization area. And those people think, yeah, they're the ones that need this training. And so thankfully we do have it that they can go to, but we just need to make sure these practices know you need because the sterilization text, they need to understand the science and the why. They need to understand why you have that autoclave has to complete that cycle. You can't just take it out before it's done, right?
SPEAKER_03It's not just about loading a machine and turning on a dial or turning on something, it's so much more to that. So you are so right on that. And Nadivas would love to help you promote, you know, training for new individuals. So we'll talk about that. But for the time being, I'm gonna go ahead and turn the mic over to Leslie. Thank you, Michelle.
SPEAKER_04Michelle, again, thank you so much for not only uh stirring the course for OSAP and and the membership and you're doing such a wonderful job, but also for putting so much effort into DICAM. It's only, as you said, three years old. And I am thrilled to have dental infection control be highlighted for a full month because it is so important. And I don't think it got the notoriety that it deserves until OSAP put this out in front of not only the members, but pushing the members pushing it out to um the people that they know. Now, as OSAP is enhancing awareness of infection control during DICAN, can you tell us a little bit more about how we can help to push that information out, how we can let other people know about uh DICAN and the benefits, the many benefits that you listed?
SPEAKER_00Yes. If you go to OSAP.org, go to our website, there is a link to click on DICAM resources. And we have created social media posts that you can share on your pages. Um, so practices can share it, individuals can share it to help promote dental infection control awareness. And it's not just to promote to dental professionals, but it's to promote to our patients what we're doing to keep them safe. You know, we know that during the pandemic, there were a lot of people that they were a little nervous about going back to the dental practice. And we want them to know it's safe to go to the dental practice, and they need to know what we do to keep them safe. So I think that's real important that we continue to share these resources.
SPEAKER_04And you know, our patients are so much more aware of PPE. They know what disinfectants are, they know that CDC means centers for disease control, and they are watching us everything from washing our hands long enough to if we're wearing our PPE correctly, because they learned all about how not to wear a mask during this pandemic. So that thing, it's important that our patients know that they can count on us for infection control and they can count on us for their safety, and they can count on us as dental professionals to be knowledgeable with the latest information.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And being a member of OSAP, I think is a great thing for a practice to promote in their offices. Um, we have we have the safest dental visit pledge that practices can print off. They can all sign it, they can put it in a frame and put it in that waiting area to promote what they're doing. Look at what we're doing to take care of you.
SPEAKER_04Thanks so much, Michelle. That is really a great information, not only for us as dental professionals, but how we can convey that important message of infection prevention and control to our patients. Wonderful.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Michelle, it has been such a pleasure having you with us today. Um, I just wanted to let you know that we have linked OSAP and DICAM on our website so our listeners can go and and avail themselves of many of the of the resources. And I love the idea of promoting the um safest dental visit pledge to reassure patients, especially now when we're hearing the news reports about increased hospitalizations with COVID and and so forth. So um, having said that, I think we have a special gift to our listeners for OSAP membership.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So we have a special code, OSAP. It's OSAP G O 50, OSAP Go 50, and this will give you 50% off a new membership.
SPEAKER_02Wonderful.
SPEAKER_00And we also an individual membership, it's very affordable for OSAP for a year. It's $120. So this drops it down to $60.
SPEAKER_02Oh, and to have access for all those resources at that very affordable price. So that we hope our listeners will take advantage of that. Again, it's OSAP Go 50. We'll also list that in the show notes with a link and on the resources on our website. So we're continuing to celebrate. This is our month as infection control professionals. And and again, Michelle, thank you so much for being here with us. And we hope to have you back again soon. Um, we do have a question from Leslie. When does the code expire?
SPEAKER_00Um, it will expire, I believe, in 60 days.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so the code is good for 60 days. We'll make sure we make a note of that on our website. Thank you, Leslie, for keeping us on the straight and narrow. So thank you again to our listeners. Um, the compliance divas bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating regulatory compliance to keep you on course. Submit any questions by email to support at the compliancedevas.com. Resources will be on the website and in the show notes. And again, thank you, Michelle, and happy diecam.
SPEAKER_00Happy DieCam to all of you.