ABSTRACT
Covid-19 pandemic has directed hospitals to concentrate services for patients who are positive or still in undefined status. Some countries are even forced to build temporary structures or utilize multifunctional buildings such as sports/public halls. On the other hand, hospitals still have to keep performing other routine services and this becomes a challenge for them. When global attention nowadays focuses more on how hospitals serve the Covid-19 cases, this research proposes another side of healthcare service needed by people in the pandemic, which is the dental clinic. The spread of Covid-19 through droplets puts both dental patients and practitioners at risk target of Covid-19 transmission. Therefore, particular standards and protocols are mandatory to be deployed. A prototype design of the temporary dental clinic is the main output from this research. The main objective is to provide service for the community without being afraid of contracting the pandemic as the clinic will be isolated from the regular hospital buildings. To achieve this objective, this research employed three approaches for the methodology. It was started with the desk study to review references on recent technology of temporary building structures. Followed by the online questionnaire using the Google platform distributed to 206 registered dental practitioners in Aceh, in collaboration with the Indonesian Dental Association, Aceh Province, Indonesia. The questionnaire collected the data related to the needs, standards, procedures, and dental service protocols under the Covid-19 pandemic as the main reference for the design process. The last approach was gathering feedback from dentists and international architects who are experts in building science and technology. This was done through a series of pre-design reviews. This research has a high degree of urgency globally, including Saudi Arabia, which is also impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also in line with Saudi Vision 2030 to enhance the standard quality and sustainability of healthcare services. The prototype design proposed in this research does not only contribute to the Covid-19 pandemic in particular but also post-Covid scenarios or other possible global pandemics in the future.
ABSTRACT
Several reports have been released on how COVID-19 infection could be transmitted through dental services. This has caused fear in the community to seek treatment at a dentist. The increase in public fear is a change in emotions due to the overwhelming amount of news or reports about the spread of the COVID-19 infection through print, social, and electronic media around the world. A cross-sectional study was conducted using online survey from 10 June to 20 October 2020. This well-constructed questionnaire was designated using the free access Google form application and the link to the online survey was sent to participants through WhatsApp. A total of 1040 participants from 10 provinces in Indonesia participated in this study. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 24. The correlation between fear and oral health knowledge related to dental treatment were tested using the Chi-square and Spearman correlation test. Of the 1040 participants, 87.02% and 12.98% individuals experienced mild and moderate fear, respectively. A good level of oral health knowledge was found in 53.7% and the average level was 46.3% of participants. The bivariate correlation showed that less fear level was correlated with good oral health knowledge (r=−0.126, p<0.05). The greatest fear comes from the possibility of transmission of the COVID-19 infection from dentists and seeing dentist with one of COVID-19 infection symptoms. The changing the habit of washing hands before undergoing dental treatment shows a fear of contracting a COVID-19 infection. People with a good level of knowledge have less fear than average level. © 2021. All rights reserved.