COVID-19 and Dentistry: Challenges and Opportunities

In the past 2 years, the world has suffered major losses and damages brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools and other public establishments were closed, businesses were shut down, and people lost their jobs and source of income. Dentistry is no exception from these unprecedented adversities, in fact, it is one of the branches of medicine that was greatly affected by the pandemic. The impact of the pandemic led to different consequences and results in the dental community.

The challenges that were brought upon Dentistry

Due to the nature of COVID-19, it was impossible to avoid the challenges that it comes with. Dental health, education, and practice were all at risk in the pandemic. Dental health professionals, dentistry students, and people who are in dire need of dental help suffered big time.

Transmission of infection. The virus itself is already a challenge to the profession of dentistry as most dental procedures are aerosol-generating procedures. These could put dental health professionals at risk of infection because COVID-19 could be transmitted by the airborne particles and aerosols that are produced in dental procedures if a client is unknowingly infected with COVID-19.

Closure of dental clinics. Due to the close contact restrictions, performing dental procedures in the earlier period of the pandemic was completely restricted especially during lockdowns. Dental health professionals were hindered to attend to clients of their needs and consequently, had to close their clinics for the time being. Unfortunately, some of them were not able to open their clinics back due to the loss of not being able to earn from giving dental services.

Closure of dentistry schools. Schools being a public space, inevitably had to be closed during the pandemic. As a result, dentistry students had no choice but to take up their dentistry courses online. Most dentistry students had a hard time coping with the new reality of attending school, especially since dentistry is more practical and required a lot of work with the hands. With the lack of tools and equipment found at home, studying dentistry online has a wide disparity from studying it face-to-face and is definitely much more difficult.

Psychological impacts. With the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, dental health professionals had to take a huge blow from the sudden discontinuation of their regular practice. The psychological setbacks caused by the pandemic added with the stress and anxiety of not being able to do their profession, earn income and maintain their jobs and clinics definitely did have a negative psychological impact on dental health professionals. With the heavyweight of these problems, it is undeniably probable that some dental health professionals develop mental health disorders.

Financial impacts. The dental community is no stranger to financial setbacks due to the pandemic. Most dental health professionals were definitely not prepared for the liabilities of the sudden halt of their dental practice. Dental clinic owners are surely struggling financially in this period because they have to rise back from the loss of the abrupt closure of their clinics and have to provide themselves with costly protective equipment before continuing their practice. Having and maintaining a dental clinic itself is already a capital-intensive task, even more, when you have to account for the new needs of the clinic.

The new opportunities that will reinvent the new reality of dentistry

Despite being stripped off from the comfort of normalcy and having to witness a lot of doors closed for dentistry, people in this field do not view this era as the doom of dentistry. Instead, they see this as a time to reimagine and reinvent dentistry in this new and ever-changing world.

Rethinking the future of dentistry. The pandemic was a reminder to people in the dental community that the world is ever-changing, there could be sudden changes that we cannot foresee. With that thought in mind, this time is an opportunity for dental researchers to focus on key issues, and to reimagine and reinvent dentistry with more flexibility involved to smoothly adapt to the major and minor changes that are continuously happening in our world. This is a chance for dentistry to improve much more than it is now.

Create innovations. With the new challenges presented to us by the pandemic, humans as we are, we provide aid to ease these challenges through innovation. Technology and information being prevalent in this age, it is a great opportunity for the field of dentistry to innovate technologically to adapt to the new normal that we have right now and to make dentistry more accessible to people. For example, Teledentistry, is the use of communication technology to provide dental care services such as dental consultations, diagnosis, and patient education. With more innovations, the dental community can grow bigger and cater to more people in need.

DHPs develop a new skill set. In the time of the pandemic, there was an obvious shortage of front liners. The medical community, faced with another challenge, had to deploy other health professionals, including dental health professionals to provide assistance in frontline health services. This became an opportunity for dental health professionals to develop new skills that would be helpful for future emergencies or even future endeavors.

With the challenges and opportunities presented above, we can say that despite the numerous adversities and hindrances that the dental community faced, they still managed to make something out of the situation, something even better than the dentistry that we used to know. We can confidently say that dentistry is not dead, and will never be.

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