Northern Ireland's Health and Social Care Board intends to carry out a scoping exercise this year to determine how much progress general dental service (GDS) practices have made in implementing the HTM 01-05: Decontamination in dental practice guidance.

This follows a letter sent by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) in February of this year to all general dental practitioners updating them on the Department's position on HTM 01-05.

A hard copy of HTM 01-05 and an audit tool was sent to each Health Service dental practice in May 2010. The audit tool is for internal use within the dental practice and will help the dental team assess its level of compliance with HTM 01-05 and identify areas that require improvement.

The DHSSPS expects general dental practices to implement the best practice recommendations in HTM 01-05 along with the ‘Northern Ireland amendments' detailed in the letter of 19 February 2010 by the end of 2012.