How clean are your local dentist's offices?

So, I finally made it back to the dentist today after quite a while, and out of nowhere, she grabs this disinfectant spray—the kind you’d see in a spray bottle for cleaning windows—and just gives the counter a quick spritz. Then, she takes those two handpieces and the air-water syringe and just casually sprays them twice as she's moving past.

I can't help but wonder if that's actually standard procedure or what.

It really should be common sense!

I’ve never once walked into my dentist's office and seen him fail to wash his hands or reuse old instruments... Honestly, I probably wouldn't even bother going there if he didn't follow those protocols!

It’s perfectly standard procedure to disinfect everything.
Any equipment that doesn't make direct contact with a new patient—just basic surface tools—gets disinfected.
But anything that actually touches them, you know, things like drills, burs, needles, tweezers... those undergo full sterilization.
Are you seriously suggesting that shouldn't be happening either?

What was she even thinking? Honestly, she could have at least wiped down the drill or something, but instead, she just sprayed it. I guess there's no telling if the guy before me had some kind of STI or some other kind of illness

They should have been way more thorough with the cleaning, especially the drills and equipment like that. And that suction tip used in patients' mouths? Needs to be replaced with a fresh one every single time. I don't care much about the control panel; what matters is that everything going into a patient's mouth is fully disinfected. From what I've seen, some dentists even swap out the drill bits themselves.