Burnout is associated with amount of work and sleep quality of Public-school dentists in the Caraga Region

@#<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objectives:</strong> Public health dentists in the Philippines are being made to treat more patients and do other tasks despite being underpaid. Despite this, there is a dearth of information on burnout and its association with Filipino public-school dentists. Thus, this study aimed to assess the burnout levels and their association with the amount of work and sleep quality.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Methods:</strong> There were 10 out of 14 dentists from the Caraga Region who responded and answered a self-directed and self-reported online questionnaire composed of 52 questions that gauged sociodemographic data, sources of burnout, level of burnout, lower back pain, and sleep quality.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Results:</strong> Based on the results of the study, dentists with more than 40,000 patients (rs=0.81, p=0.005), in charge of more than one municipality (rs=0.67, p=0.035) and more than one school (rs=0.67, p=0.035), and with poor sleep (rs=1, p=0.005) experience more burnout.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The level of burnout is high in Filipino public-school dentists. In this study, burnout was associated with dentists who have poor sleep, having to serve more than 40,000 patients, more than one municipality, and more than one school. The legal bases for oral health and other pertinent memorandum orders from concerned government organizations should be revisited.</p>

Spatio-temporal differences in the Filipinos' search trends for toothache and milk tea

@#<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Background:</strong> Since 1987, data regarding dental caries prevalence in the Philippines has been shown to be over 90%.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objective:</strong> This study compared the trends of Filipino web searches regarding toothache and milk tea from 2017 to 2019 through spatio-temporal analyses.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Methods:</strong> Google Trends searches for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019 were done using three separate search queries using the parameters "toothache" (TA) and "milk tea" (MT) as search terms, Philippines as location, Health as category, and Web Search as database.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Results:</strong> The outcome showed a decreasing trend in searches for toothache and an increasing interest for milk tea web searches from 2017 to 2019. A multiple comparison test showed that searches for MT were significantly more than TA in 2017 (p<0.001), 2018 (p<0.001), and 2019 (p<0.001). Searches for TA during the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarter compared to the 1st quarter of the year, in Caraga, Eastern Visayas, Western Visayas and Zamboanga Peninsula compared to Manila, were found to be significantly high.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Conclusion:</strong> Filipinos' health-seeking behavior show decreasing interest towards TA and increasing for MT.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Key Words:</strong> spatio-temporal analysis, data mining, health-seeking behavior, dental care, Philippines</p>

A descriptive study of the regional and time-point changes in the Filipinos' internet search for tooth decay and toothache

Background@#The Philippines has one of the highest prevalence of untreated tooth decay (TD) in the world. Toothache (TA) is a common sequela of chronic and untreated TD. Google Trends (GT) offers an inexpensive and fast method of assessing search trend for these health conditions. @*Objectives@#This study aimed to characterize the regional and time-point variations in the Filipinos' internet searches for TD and TA. @*Methods@#A descriptive analysis of a search query done on Google Trends using the search terms TD and TA was done. The parameters were constrained to include only data from the Philippines, from November 2009 to November 2019, under the health category, and the web search database. @*Results@#The top three regions that had the highest searches for TA were MIMAROPA (100%), ARMM (100%), and Caraga (82%), while CAR (27%), Metro Manila (27%), and Ilocos Region had the highest search results for TD. From 2009 (19.85%) the searches for TA progressively increased until 2019 (92.61%), while the searches for TD remained comparable from 2009 (25.09%) to 2019 (25.98%). @*Conclusion@#The results of this study reveal regional and time-point differences in the Filipinos' search interests for TD and TA.

An investigation of the Filipino dental students' personality types

@#<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>BACKGROUND</strong>: The Dentist Licensure Examination (DLE) is one of the most difficult pre-professional practice examinations in the Philippines. The personality type of a dental student can be a determining factor or a testfor-fit of the chosen college program, the DLE, and the eventual profession.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>OBJECTIVES</strong>: This study aimed to document the personality dichotomies and MBTI personality categories of the respondents.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>METHODS</strong>: Through the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), this cross-sectional investigation examined the Filipino students' personality type in a dental school in the Philippines and presented it through descriptive statistics.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>RESULTS</strong>: In retrospect to the personality dichotomies, majority or 44 (17.19%) of the students were of the Introverted feeling with intuition variety or the Introversion Intuition Feeling Perceiving (INFP) type. This personality type does not coincide with that of a dentist or dental student in other studies.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>CONCLUSION</strong>: The mainstream dental students' personality types were inclined to traits that are indicative of the INFP professions (e.g. artists, counselors, social workers, etc.) and not of a prospective dentist. These findings will add to the database of dental education in the Philippines, and will enable the dental educators and schools to improve their educational strategies.</p>