Dentist’s preparedness in practice management during COVID-19 pandemic in Tamil Nadu – A cross sectional survey

Background: COVID 19 has created a major havoc amongst healthcare professionals, mainly Dental surgeons. However, it shall be difficult that Dental services would be denied to the people for long while. Hence, Dental practitioners must be fully prepared before resuming the services. Aim: Thus, the present survey was carried out to evaluate the attitude and preparedness of Dentist in clinical practice during pandemic. Materials and method: This online mode of cross-sectional survey was conducted through google forms among Dentists of Tamil Nadu. A pretested and validated questionnaire comprising 25 questions were used to enquire the sociodemographic details (5), attitude (7), and preparedness (13) regarding practising Dentistry during pandemic. 453 participants responded back and 52 respondents were rejected due to incomplete response. Data collected was entered in Excel sheet, coded, and analysed using SPSS software. Categorical variables are represented as N (%) and Pearson’s Chi-square test was carried out for inter-group comparison with p-value < 0.05. Results: Majority of the Dentists seemed to present with good attitude to face pandemic situations in an appropriate way. It was also found that a statistically significant difference exists among various aspects of preparedness of Dentists in terms of work experience and gender with p (<0.005). Conclusion: In the present survey, the attitude and preparedness of Dentists were found to be satisfactory concerning COVID-19, but some pitfalls exist in the preparedness necessitating the need for approaching towards essential preparedness to handle the pandemic in best possible way.