Last Wednesday, one Chapel Hill orthodontist opened back up her office after experiencing weeks of uncertainty, not knowing when she would be able to see patients again.
Dr. Ashley Morgenstern is the owner of Morgenstern Orthodontics – a newer dental office that set up shop in Chapel Hill about a year-and-a-half ago.
Morgenstern said dental offices were recommended to close even before the stay-at-home order went into effect. The last day her office was open was March 18. She was closed for eight weeks and during that time Morgenstern single-handedly saw patients on a strictly emergency basis.
Morgenstern said, over the past weeks, most dentists were operating this way.
“I think most dentists were still seeing emergencies during the office closures because our goal was to hopefully avoid someone having something more severe like an infection and need to go to the emergency room,” Morgenstern said. “We wanted to keep people out of the hospital.”
After Phase 1 of the state’s re-opening went into effect last week, Morgenstern began to return to somewhat ‘normal’ operations – but these operations still look a little different. While most businesses are taking extensive precautions to keep people healthy, dental offices need to go above and beyond as they’re working inside people’s mouths.
“Dentists are at a really high risk because we work in an area of the body that is highly infectious since this is spread through respiratory droplets,” Morgenstern said. “So we have implemented a lot of new safety protocols and I think most dental offices have done the same.”
Dr. Morgenstern (middle) and her team.
Safety protocols like limiting the amount of people in the office – including patients and staff. This means Morgenstern only ever has one other staffer helping her in the office and while a patient is in the chair. This also means having parents wait in the car and staggering when patients come into the office.
“We also are screening everybody with a quick health screening to make sure they’re not having any COVID-19 symptoms or they haven’t been exposed to anyone who does to try to avoid anyone who may be sick from even coming to the office in the first place,” Morgenstern said.
For Morgenstern’s office, this health screening comes in the form of a questionnaire sent to a patient’s email a day and a half before their appointment.
If all is clear on the questionnaire, a patient will participate in additional safety measures upon arrival like getting their temperature checked and gargling with a hydrogen peroxide or betadine rinse.
Staff are also wearing increased level of PPE with higher level masks and face shields when needed. Even then, Morgenstern said she is trying to avoid certain procedures when possible to further limit potential spread.
Some questions from Morgenstern’s screening
“We’re also trying to avoid, as much as possible, any aerosolizing procedures,” Morgenstern said. “So procedures that kind of spray up little droplets of water and saliva into the air that are suspended there for a while – which is common in dentistry.”
Aerosolizing procedures could be anything where a drill is involved. In orthodontics it might be removing some glue leftover from braces off a tooth in general dentistry it might be a filling.
Overall, Morgenstern said everyone that has come in has been very supportive, understanding and kind. She said while visiting the orthodontist or dentist can often come with some trepidation in normal times, most are happy to be seen.
“We have seen, in general, a little more hesitation from everyone which I think is a good thing to be cautious,” Morgenstern said. “I think for the most part a lot of our patients, since they’re in active treatment, they’ve been looking forward to coming in and staying on track with their treatment so knowing that we’ve done all these things to try to prevent the spread has been helpful for them to feel comfortable for them to come in and keep their appointment.”
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