An exposure incident is a specific thing: blood or other potentially infectious material contacting your eye, mouth, mucous membrane, or non-intact skin, or a puncture from a contaminated sharp. When it happens, the clock starts, because some post-exposure treatment works best within hours.
Right away
- Stop. Make the patient safe and let the dentist know what happened.
- Wash a puncture or skin exposure with soap and water. Flush a splash to the eyes, nose, or mouth with water or saline. Don't squeeze the wound or use bleach on skin.
- Report it to the dentist or your designated person immediately. Not at the end of the day; now.
- Get a medical evaluation promptly, the same day. Your office's exposure control plan says where. The evaluating clinician decides on testing and whether post-exposure prophylaxis is needed, and that decision is time-sensitive.
What OSHA requires of the office
Under the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard, the employer provides a confidential medical evaluation and follow-up at no cost to you, documents the incident (the route of exposure, the circumstances, and the source patient if known and permitted), and offers hepatitis B vaccination to at-risk staff before any of this ever happens. The source patient's blood is tested with consent where the law allows. You're entitled to the results of your own testing and to counseling.
Afterward, the office looks at why it happened. Most needlesticks come from recapping with two hands, passing uncapped syringes, or sharps left on the tray. The fix is usually a device or a habit, and a good office treats the report as information, not blame.