Safe Placement and Management of Sharps Bins in Dental Practices
On Thursday the 3rd of September 2026, Public Services Delivery Scotland convened a stakeholder summit to discuss sharps injuries associated with current safe systems of work in relation to sharps bins in dental practices in Scotland. The current guidance around the management of sharps was discussed by participants and two takeaway messages from the event are worth highlighting.
It has been identified that the positioning of sharps bins in dental surgeries is a major additional risk factor leading to injuries. Sharps’ bins placed in areas where physical and visual access is restricted such as under work tops or in cupboards present a specific hazard. It is essential that all sharps’ bins are placed where the opening can be easily accessed and is clearly visible. Wall mounting of sharps bins at an appropriate height and in an area that can be controlled by the dental team members during treatment times was strongly recommended as the safest option in a dental practice environment. This reduces the chance of spillage and or inappropriate access to the contents from an unauthorised person. It also maximises the visibility of the opening at the top of the sharps bin ensuring the contents are not protruding and constituting a hazard to staff. The supplier of your sharps bin can provide further information on this.
The guidance around sharps bin management is contained within the National Infection Prevention and Control Manual: Home (NIPCM). Specific mention of 1.9 Safe Disposal of Waste (Including Sharps). Amongst the recommendations in the guidance is that the sharps bins have “a temporary closure mechanism, which must be employed when the box is not in use” suggesting closure at the end of every session, so twice daily in most dental surgeries.
Concerns around the usage of the “soft closure” mechanism were explored due to the perception that this was a legislative imperative. The potential for ‘soft closure’ at the end of a session increases the number of times that the sharps’ bin requires to be handled and, in this way, may increase the risk of injury.
The guidance (NIPCM) is intended be used across health and social care, and variation to the guidance may only be acceptable in atypical circumstance where a robust risk assessment to justify variation is in place. In a dental practice access to the surgery outside of normal treatment times can often be restricted through controlling access into the surgery space. This is typically achieved by dental practices locking the front door as it closes at lunch time. Other dental practices may have alternative means of restricting access to clinical areas during these times.
When an organisation, for example health and care setting, uses products or adopts practices that differ from those stated in this National Infection Prevention and Control Manual, that individual organisation is responsible for ensuring safe systems of work including the completion of a risk assessment approved through local governance procedures. Completion of such a risk assessment by each dental practice where it is decided to vary their sharps management protocol from the NIPCM would enable an appropriate safe system of work to be put into place.
Regards,
Paul Cushley
Director of Dentistry