Sustainability

DPU goes green!

Did you know that the journeys undertaken by patients and staff to reach dental practices account for two-thirds of the carbon emissions associated with dentistry?

Short, environmentally friendly journeys to dental practices represent a meaningful contribution to sustainability in the medical sector and promote responsible use of existing resources.

The DPU Dental Clinic in Krems is easily accessible on foot. Centrally located in the heart of the Krems-Stein Old Town, it offers ample bicycle parking for its patients and has direct public transport connections thanks to the Krems bus network.

Efficient, streamlined pathways are characteristic of the DPU Dental Clinic in Krems, which has around 50 dental chairs for holistic and modern dental care. DPU has its own laboratory, which means that technical work can be completed in house, eliminating the need for complex external shipments. The modern Central Sterile Supply Department ensures that all instruments in the clinic are properly processed. The ability to refer patients to specialist centres within the DPU Dental Clinic in Krems, which are staffed by professors and senior doctors, saves us from dispatching our patients on long journeys to neighbouring regions.

Digital practice – the modern road to the future

Since the DPU Dental Clinic in Krems opened over a decade ago, we have worked tirelessly on consistently upgrading its technical equipment. We recently introduced tablets with intuitive interfaces so that new patients can enter their medical history digitally upon admission. These tablets alone will save reams of paper every year.

Our low-radiation X-ray devices are fully digital, which means we do not require any environmentally harmful chemicals to develop the X-ray images. The trend towards digital intra-oral scanning in dentistry is also sure to bring a host of innovations in the near future.

Reduce, reuse, recycle: Raising awareness of sustainable resource use

All staff members and doctors at our clinic take great care to use consumable materials in a thoughtful manner, and ensure that our students do the same. Due to the scale of our facility, DPU targets sustainable goods management by ordering in bulk, opting for refillable products, ensuring that purchased single-use items are recyclable and conducting regular inventories. We carefully structure our warehouse and organise our procurement activities into fewer, larger collective orders.

All measures to promote sustainability in medicine must still place a strong emphasis on the quality and safety of dental treatment.

DPU is always looking to make progress and play its part in efforts to advance digitalisation and sustainability. Following this vision, further projects are in the pipeline and will be implemented in the near future at the DPU Dental Clinic in Krems.