Abstract
Moving within the second wave of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, dental education delivery has been profoundly affected by this crisis, so has the structure, evaluation, and future of dental education. Both pre-clinical and clinical dental education have experienced challenges ranging from fully online educational content to limited dental training for senior dental students. This crisis appears to be a tipping point that produced confusion in dental teaching especially clinical sciences. Although medical institutions immediately started to adapt to the unexpected COVID-19 crisis, dental and oral health educational services are profoundly impaired due to the dental team's propinquity to the patient and the aerosols generated during routine dental therapeutic procedures. Dental students unlike other medical students are considered to be at the highest risk due to the nature of their clinical training that includes working in the oral cavity of patients using aerosol-generating equipment. Some dental schools have taken the leadership and documented their modifications during this pandemic; however, there is a serious need for further investigation and wide range screening of the situation in the dental schools during the COVID-19 crisis. The aim of this mini-review is to present these challenges and how academic dental institutions have implemented strategies to overcome them.
Highlights
December 2019, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was firstly spotted in Wuhan, China, as pneumonia of unknown origin [1]
The current review aims to illustrate how one of public dental schools in Egypt acted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to present the ongoing challenges, and how academic and clinical educators have worked to overcome them
It will be important to evaluate in the future the pedagogical effects of the structural change in the dental educational techniques caused by the COVID-19 crisis
Summary
December 2019, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was firstly spotted in Wuhan, China, as pneumonia of unknown origin [1]. According to the Egyptian Supreme Council of Universities regulations, the majority of Egyptian dental programs adopted the Hybrid Learning Model, in which lectures (theoretical part) were introduced via e-learning platforms, while in-person learning was limited to preclinical (laboratory), and practical (clinical) courses that cannot be delivered remotely This strategy was implemented to minimize the physical interaction between students, in order to control the outspread of the infection. Dental academics had to plan for a safe recovery of clinical teaching for students, patients, educators, and staff with contingency plans This is very crucial as SARS-CoV-2 is known to be highly contagious and the status of virus transmission in the Egyptian community remains unclear. It will be important to evaluate in the future the pedagogical effects of the structural change in the dental educational techniques caused by the COVID-19 crisis
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
