De huisartsenpost controleert de ontsmette wond.

Huisartsenpost is a compound noun. It refers to an out-of-hours GP clinic or general practitioner emergency service, where people go for urgent medical problems outside normal doctor’s office hours.

It is built from:

• huisarts = general practitioner / family doctor
• post = post, station, service point

So the whole word means something like GP service point.

In Dutch, every noun is either a de-word or a het-word. Huisartsenpost is a de-word, so it takes de.

With compound nouns, the gender usually comes from the last part of the compound. Here, the last part is post, and post is a de-word. So:

• de post
• de huisartsenpost

That -en is part of how Dutch often forms compound nouns. The first part is huisarts and it becomes huisartsen- in the compound.

So:

• huisarts = GP
• huisartsenpost = GP service / GP clinic

This -en can feel a bit like a linking element. Historically or structurally, it often looks like a plural form, and in many compounds that is just the standard way the word is built. You do not need to translate the -en separately.

Controleert is the present tense, third person singular form of controleren.

Conjugation:

• ik controleer
• jij controleert
• hij/zij/het controleert

The subject here is de huisartsenpost, which is grammatically singular, so Dutch uses controleert.

Yes. This is a very normal main-clause word order in Dutch:

• De huisartsenpost = subject
• controleert = finite verb
• de ontsmette wond = object

So it follows the basic Dutch main-clause pattern of subject + verb + object, which is similar to English here.

Because ontsmette is an adjective here, and Dutch adjectives usually take an -e ending when they come before a noun with de.

The base participle is:

• ontsmet = disinfected

But before de wond, it becomes:

• de ontsmette wond

This is because:

• wond is a de-word
• it is singular
• it has the definite article de

So the adjective normally gets -e.

Compare:

• een ontsmette wond
• de ontsmette wond

In both of those, the adjective takes -e.

No. In this sentence, ontsmette is not the main verb. The main verb is controleert.

Here, ontsmette is an adjective describing wond:

• de ontsmette wond = the disinfected wound

It comes from the verb ontsmetten = to disinfect, but in this sentence it functions like a descriptive word, just like gebroken in de gebroken arm or gesloten in de gesloten deur.

Because wond is a de-word in Dutch.

So:

• de wond = the wound
• een wond = a wound

This also affects the adjective form before it:

• de ontsmette wond

Ontsmetten means to disinfect. It is specifically about killing germs or making something medically clean.

Schoonmaken means to clean, which is more general and does not necessarily mean disinfecting.

So:

• een wond schoonmaken = clean a wound
• een wond ontsmetten = disinfect a wound

In a medical sentence like this one, ontsmetten is the more precise word.

Yes. Even though huisartsen- looks plural-like, the whole compound huisartsenpost is treated as one singular noun.

That is why the verb is singular:

• De huisartsenpost controleert ...

This is similar to English expressions like the police station checks... or the emergency clinic checks... The institution is grammatically one thing.

A few things may help:

• huisartsenpost is one long compound word, but Dutch speakers say it as one unit.
• controleert has the ee sound in the last syllable: con-tro-leert
• ontsmette ends with a pronounced -te sound because of the adjective ending

A rough pronunciation guide:

• huisartsenpost ≈ house-art-sen-post
• controleert ≈ con-tro-layrt
• ontsmette wond ≈ ont-smet-tuh vont

The exact sounds are of course more Dutch than English, but those approximations can help at first.