1. First wash your hands. Now, donning new gloves, lay out everything you need on a brand new dental cloth. Everything you use like iodine pads, alcohol pads, or surgilube, should be pre-packaged or bottled, and anything re-usable like stainless steel tools should be cleaned and sterilized properly prior to use. Anything disposable like rubber bands, corks, toothpicks, or q-tips should also be autoclaved prior to use. Skinscribes are okay to re-use ONLY if you use them on clean, unbroken skin anywhere besides the mouth or genitals.

2. Without touching the inside of your sterilization pouch, open the largest pouch on your tray, this is where your sterile field will be. Now open each of the other sterilization pouches without touching the contents dumping them onto the sterile pouch. Open the iodine and alcohol pads and set them on the pouch (these are okay to touch with gloves because they are disinfecting wipes).

3. Once you have all of the tools you need, the iodine and/or alcohol pads, surgilube, needle(s), and jewelry on the sterilization pouch, DON A NEW PAIR OF GLOVES NOW USING HAND SANITIZER ON THEM. You are now ready to touch the contents of the packages. Get everything you need ready to do the piercing; if you need to open a small captive bead ring or take off a ball to a barbell, now is the time to do it. Once this is done, use the iodine pad to swab the area being pierced. I use an alcohol pad to remove the yellow iodine stain immediately after.

4. Use the skinscribe to make your mark. DO NOT touch anything on your sterile field after handling the marker, everything is still sterile on the pouch. If you are doing an oral or genital piercing, use a sterilized toothpick and dip it into some gentian violet ink. You can use a skinscribe, but you must give it to the client or dispose of it afterwards.

5. Once the mark is made, don a new pair of gloves with hand sanitizer and do the piercing. Once the jewelry is in, control any bleeding with the pre sterilized q-tips; if there is profuse bleeding, use a paper towel to collect the blood, and get more sterile q-tips.

6. After any bleeding is over, go over healing instructions with your client. Dispose of the needle(s) properly, and wrap the remaining contents on the tray INTO your gloves and dispose of them. Donning a new pair of gloves, spray your tray AND piercing table with Madacide, Wavacide, Cavicide, or any other hospital grade hard surface disinfectant. Let sit for one minute, and wipe it up, disposing the same way you did with your tray contents.

7. Wash up! Your ready for your next piercing!

Notes

Pre-sterilize your q-tips, rubber bands, tooth picks and corks accordingly to the piercings you perform.

ALWAYS have sterilized q-tips on hand, sometimes a client might bleed profusely after the piercing.

Inquire if and when the client has eaten that day and always keep them on the table for a few minutes after the piercing has been performed; you don’t want them passing out in your shop!

Remember, just because the dentist and doctor don’t set up their equipment properly, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. We owe it to our clients to perform these procedures with the utmost care and sterility.