Abstract
Objective: Lockdown and other measures, including the closure of universities, introduced by Governments across countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have appreciably impacted on the education of dental and medical students across countries. Key challenges included the need to rapidly move to e-learning as well as instigate new approaches to practicals for health science students. This involves lecturers and students necessarily needing to rapidly adapt to e-learning and other approaches. There have also been affordability issues among students to regularly access the Internet, and purchase the necessary equipment, particularly among those from low- and middle-income countries such as Bangladesh. Consequently, there is an urgent need to assess current challenges among senior level physicians and educators in Bangladesh regarding the education of dental and medical students arising from the current pandemic, and how these are being addressed, to provide future direction. This is particularly important in Bangladesh with high rates of both infectious and non-infectious diseases. Materials and Methods: Pragmatic investigation involving a purposely developed questionnaire based on previous studies and the experience of the co-authors. The questionnaire was distributed to 15 senior-level educators with the findings analysed by themes. Results: Key issues included little experience with e-learning at the start of the pandemic among both staff and students, poor internet access and cost of internet bundles. In addition, fear and anxieties among both students and staff. The colleges responded by instigating teaching classes for educators on e-learning and providing adequate personal protective equipment for staff and students during teaching and practical sessions. These formed the basis of future recommendations. Other recommendations included increased flexibility among staff and students. Conclusion: The pandemic posed appreciable challenges to both staff and students attending dental and medical colleges in Bangladesh. Some of the key issues are starting to be addressed. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol. 21 No. 02 April’22 Page : 444-454
Highlights
The current COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent preventative measures to limit the spread of the virus, including social distancing measures, closure of borders, and cancelling of clinics, has resulted in considerable economic and healthcare consequences across countries[1,2,3]
Disruption of clinics for patients with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) alongside the mental health impact arising from lockdown and other activities which includes an increase in gender violence arising from the economic consequences of introduced measures[1,6,7,8,9,10,11]
We used a pragmatic investigative framework with a representational model approach among senior-level physicians and dental educators to explore key issues and challenges in this pilot study[49,50,51]. This approach built on the recently conducted study in Africa regarding the impact of COVID-19 on physician and pharmacy education combined with previous crosscountry and cross-national studies undertaken by a number of the co-authors across disease areas among low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) including COVID-19 related topics[20,48,52,53,54,55,56,57]
Summary
The current COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent preventative measures to limit the spread of the virus, including social distancing measures, closure of borders, and cancelling of clinics, has resulted in considerable economic and healthcare consequences across countries[1,2,3]. There has been an increase in the prescribing of antibiotics for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 in Bangladesh, similar to other countries, despite only a limited number of patients with COVID-19 having confirmed bacterial or fungal infections[12,13,14,15] This builds on existing high and inappropriate rates of prescribing and dispensing of antibiotics generally in Bangladesh and wider among low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) including among dentists[16,17,18,19,20]. This included misinformation surrounding hydroxychloroquine, which resulted in increased costs, morbidity and mortality[1,28,29]
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