Abstract
An observational cross-sectional survey was planned to analyze the weekly workload reduction of German dentists during lockdown due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were predominantly members of the Free Association of German Dentists and filled in an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent to a total of 9416 dentists, with a response rate of 27.98% (n = 2635). Respondents were divided into seven macro areas by gross domestic product. Nearly two-thirds of dentists (65.16%) reported a reduction in their practice workload of more than 50% compared to the pre-pandemic period with statistically significant differences between German macro areas (p < 0.01). Weekly workload was reduced during the lockdown in 93.00% of study participants, while 55.33% dental care centers with multiple employed dentists under the direction of a non-dentist general manager had only a 40% reduction in weekly workload compared to a solo practice or a practice of a dentist with an employed dentist (30.24% and 28.39%, respectively). Dentists in Germany drastically reduced their practice activity during the first wave of the COVID-19 lockdown, both in rural and urban areas. Short, medium, and long-term effects of the pandemic on dental practices, dental staff as well as patient care need to be further investigated.
Highlights
In Germany, the first confirmed case COVID-19 pandemic has been recorded since the end of January 2020 according to the Ministry of Health in Bavaria
The standardization of the questionnaire is described in detail in the previous paper [10]; briefly, the questionnaire was pre-tested on a small group (n = 42); Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) was run for the test–retest and intra-rater reliability for each item
22.58% (HE-RP-SL); more than 4/5 (87.07%) of the dentists participating in the survey are dentists who own their own practice
Summary
COVID-19, as the disease has become known, is the third coronavirus to emerge in the human population recently. In Germany, the first confirmed case COVID-19 pandemic has been recorded since the end of January 2020 according to the Ministry of Health in Bavaria On 27 March, the German federal parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) passed a law entitled “Law to protect the population in the event of an epidemic situation of national importance”. This allows orders to be issued at the federal level in the federal
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