1.
Dental settings have one of the highest risks of infection transmission (Jamal et al., 2020; Mohebati, Davis, & Fry, 2010). Therefore, the COVID‐19 pandemic has presented significant challenge for dental students and infection control measures. Data presented here were extracted from a survey conducted among Palestinian dental students in their clinical study years to evaluate their readiness to return to dental care provision during the COVID‐19 pandemic.
A total of 305 dental students from Al‐Quds University (AQU) and Arab American University (AAU) completed the questionnaire in mid‐May 2020. Thirty‐four percent of the current sample (n = 103) perceived COVID‐19 as very dangerous, and 84.3% (n = 257) believed that COVID‐19 is a serious public health issue. Fifty‐five percent (n = 168) did not consider themselves prepared for this outbreak, and 66.2% (n = 202) did not think that their outpatient clinics' infection control measures prior to COVID‐19 are adequate to receive patients during this pandemic. Eighty‐eight percent of the students (n = 269) admitted to fear of transmitting the virus to family and friends. This fear was mainly related to their perception that standard precautions used in dental settings are inadequate and make it unsafe to deal with patients during the current pandemic (χ2 = 50.45, p < .001). Thus, 82% of students (n = 250) preferred to avoid working with COVID‐19 suspected patients. This perception of unsafety related to the prior‐to‐COVID‐19 infection measures also impacted the level of confidence these students had in dealing with COVID‐19 patients (χ2 = 25.8, p = .01). Only 26% (n = 80) of the students had “considerable‐to‐great” level of confidence in handling suspected COVID‐19 patients (Table 1).
Table 1.
Students' risk perception and readiness to treat patients amid the COVID‐19 pandemic
| Question | Categories | N | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| How do you perceive COVID‐19? | Very dangerous | 103 | 33.8 |
| Moderately dangerous | 190 | 62.3 | |
| Not dangerous | 12 | 3.9 | |
| In case a patient was sneezing or coughing in your clinic, what would you do? | Refuse treating the patient and ask him/her to leave the clinic | 15 | 4.9 |
| Treat the patient and ask him/her to go to the hospital | 113 | 37.0 | |
| Refer the patient to the hospital without treating him/her | 177 | 58.0 | |
| To what extent do you have confidence in handling suspected COVID‐19 patients? | Not at all | 70 | 23.0 |
| To a little extent | 60 | 19.7 | |
| To some extent | 95 | 31.1 | |
| To a considerable extent | 56 | 18.4 | |
| To a great extent | 24 | 7.9 | |
| I fear I will transmit COVID‐19 to my family members | Strongly agree | 191 | 62.6 |
| Agree | 78 | 25.6 | |
| Disagree | 23 | 7.5 | |
| Strongly disagree | 13 | 4.3 | |
| I feel overwhelmed with new COVID‐19 regulations | Strongly agree | 49 | 16.1 |
| Agree | 192 | 63.0 | |
| Disagree | 56 | 18.4 | |
| Strongly disagree | 8 | 2.6 | |
| I don't feel safe at work when I use the standard precautions | Strongly agree | 54 | 17.7 |
| Agree | 139 | 45.6 | |
| Disagree | 102 | 33.4 | |
| Strongly disagree | 10 | 3.3 |
It is obvious from current data that students' confidence in handling COVID‐19 patients and the fear of transmitting infection to family and friends were related to their perception of the inadequacy of standard infection control protocols used prior to COVID‐19. Therefore, dental schools need to invest in the new infection control measures placed by national authorities, and adopted by universities as their new norm. As an example, AQU followed a very strict protocol in reopening their student dental clinics and ensured all advanced PPE needed to implement these protocols. This should be accompanied by periodic updating of students' knowledge about infectious diseases and control measures.
Another important point that needs to be addressed by dental schools following the COVID‐19 pandemic is how to change current teaching philosophy to make it more resilient for future pandemics and crises. First, dental schools need to teach their students not to depend solely on the current restorative model and to learn alternative evidence‐based treatment options that focus on prevention, minimal intervention, and less aerosol generation. Examples are atraumatic restorative treatment, Hall technique, and the use of silver diamine fluoride (SDF) in disease stabilization (de Amorim et al., 2018; Khan, Badar, Tab assum, & Ghafoor, 2019; Slayton et al., 2018).
Second, students in this sample believed that they have an important role in educating patients about COVID‐19; this sense of responsibility needs to be maximized in emphasizing the importance of dentists' role in pandemics in providing care and supporting other frontline healthcare providers when needed. Dental students need to view themselves not only as excellent dentists but also as practicing healthcare professionals providing oral health within the context of systemic health and infection prevention.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Ruwaa Alawia: Data curation; Formal analysis; Writing–original draft. Abanoub Riad: Formal analysis; Writing–review & editing. Elham Kateeb: Conceptualization; Methodology; Supervision; Validation; Writing–review & editing.
PEER REVIEW
The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1111/odi.13593.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank each anonymously participating dental student of Al‐Quds University (Palestine) and Arab American University (Palestine) who contributed to making this work possible.
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Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.