BACKGROUND: An outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), has influenced every aspect of life. Healthcare workers, especially dentists, are at a high risk of getting infected due to close contact with patients Aim: to identify factors that can affect the psychological health of dental professionals during the COVID – 19 pandemic.
METHOD: This systematic review was conducted for the full-text English articles focusing in the field of dentistry, specifically looking at the impact of COVID – 19 on the psychological health of dental professionals, from January 1st 2020 to April 1st 2021.
RESULTS: A total of 677 papers were retrieved, reduced to 136 following removal of duplicates. The abstracts were screened using the eligibility criteria, and 52 were found to match the criteria. After screening the full-text articles, 32 were excluded, resulting in a total of 20 studies. The significant findings and conclusions from these studies were extracted and grouped under themes.
CONCLUSION: The 3 major factors responsible for affecting the psychological health of dental professionals during the COVID – 19 pandemic include: fear of contagion, subjective overload, and perceived job insecurity and loss of income. There is a need for countries to enact measures that ensure positive mental wellbeing of dental professionals, so that they do not take any adverse action or decisions. Furthermore, should another pandemic or viral outbreak occur in the future, policies and strategies designed and implemented, will ensure dental professionals continue to deliver service without significant psychological distress.
Data cleaning is an essential part of any research work without which the validity and reliability of the data could come under the spotlight. Aim: to document common errors found during the cleaning of datasets and suggests ways of minimizing errors during data entry process, reducing human errors throughout data cleaning.
Design and Setting: a case study based on the national Reproductive Health Assessment (RHA) data conducted in Solomon Islands in 2013.
Objective: The main objective of the Solomon Islands RHA was to establish the health status of reproductive aged women between the ages of 15 – 49 for the Solomon Islands.
Method: data was collected using questionnaires and entered on to the SPSS database in the country by the local Solomon Islands research assistants who were trained by the Pacific Sexual and Reproductive Health Research Center (PSRHRC). The data was brought back to Fiji where the cleaning process took place.
Results: findings of this case study showed that there were issues with the standardization of databases, database familiarization and data merging.
Conclusion: more training is needed for researchers who are involved in data collection, data entry and data cleaning to minimize such errors which could give results which may not be a true representation of the indented study.
Aim To identify challenges faced by dental interns in the workforce and to suggest Pacific Island Countries (PIC) on further research in this area. Materials and Methods A comprehensive search of Medline, Embase, Scopus and ProQuest databases was conducted using relevant keywords. All studies, published from 1st January 2000 to 31st January 2021, were taken into consideration. Removal of duplicates and screening the full-text articles using eligibility criteria were used to finalise the number of articles. The significant findings and conclusions were extracted and grouped under themes. Results A total of 16 studies met the inclusion criteria, involving dental interns, medical interns, postgraduate and undergraduate. Five themes were identified as the main challenges faced by dental interns in the workplace including workplace bullying, handling medical emergencies, community placement, lack of interdisciplinary approach and poor record keeping. Conclusion There is a need for PIC to conduct research and surveys, to identify the challenges its dental interns may be facing. This will create an ideal foundation from which strategies and initiatives can be implemented and enforced in the dental internship programme. Ensuring that oral health services are delivered efficiently and oral status of the Pacific is not compromised.
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