Generally, room turnover — the time between one patient leaving and the next sitting down — adds up quickly. Well-organised instrument cassettes are one of the easiest ways to shorten it.
One cassette per procedure
Create a cassette for each common procedure: examination, hygiene, restorative, extraction, surgical, endodontic. Opening one cassette is faster than gathering instruments from drawers.
Layout by order of use
Arrange instruments left to right in the order the clinician uses them. Assistants can hand instruments without searching, and the clinician learns where everything is.
Identical layouts across rooms
Use the same layout in every room so that any assistant can work in any room.
Colour coding
Colour-tag cassettes by procedure, so staff can pick the right cassette from the shelf at a glance.
Pre-set trays
In general, keep disposables (gauze, cotton rolls, bibs) in pre-assembled packs that match each cassette.
Turnover workflow
- Close the used cassette at the chairside.
- Remove sharps and disposables.
- Take the cassette to decontamination.
- Disinfect surfaces.
- Open the next sterile cassette and set up.
Have enough cassettes
Calculate how many cassettes of each type you need so that one is always available while others go through reprocessing. A common rule is at least three: one in use, one in reprocessing, one ready.
Aurix kits arrive in cassettes ready for use. Design your own layout with the kit builder.
