Apprehensions and Optimism among Dental Professionals during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Evaluation

Abstract

Globally, the pandemic of the coronavirus disease, which started in Wuhan, China, has become a major issue for public health. The COVID-19 epidemic notably causes health professionals to experience significantly more emotional stress than the general populace. The present study proposes to investigate the fear aspect in dentists in the initiation of clinical practice during these times. An online cross-sectional study was conducted among dental practitioners based on a pre-validated questionnaire. The data were expressed as frequency and percentage analyzed using the chi-square test using SPSS version 25. The data was obtained from 271 participants, where clinical practice after the first wave was mostly by freelancers (p-value = 0.01); most of whom were married (p-value = 0.065); 19.1% attached to institutes did not have changes in earnings; 28.1% of private practitioners had less than 10% reduction in cases. A total of 62% of private practitioners are concerned about the vaccine’s preventative effects (p-value = 0.026), and 57% of private practitioners worry about being sued for the delay in treatment (p-value = 0.036). Only 33.1% of employees in institutions worry that becoming sick could endanger their family. As dentists continue to work their way through this pandemic, these pressures only occasionally have an impact on them. According to the researchers, this is the first study that has captured the anxiety and apprehensions that dental practitioners experienced during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in India in April 2021. The study’s findings demonstrate that the study population was generally upbeat and confident that they could quickly overcome their fear.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• dental professionals
• impact on practice
• disease transmission