Issues of self-education in the continuous professional development of dentists of Ukraine in the conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic

Background: The rapid development of the dental industry and the daily practice of dentists necessitate constant learning because replenishing the stock of acquired knowledge and skills is the basis for the formation of a highly qualified specialist. Self-directed learning, especially reading and purposeful work with medical literature, constantly contribute to the development of thinking, which should correspond to the modern level of science in medical professionals in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim of the study was to monitor and analyze ways to obtain new scientific and practical knowledge by dentists to improve their dental practice. Materials and methods: The study involved 4.026 dentists who filled out for dentists online. Results: To improve daily dental practice, dentists additionally use information that is provided in lectures at scientific and practical events (80.19%) and Internet resources (71.48%). For dentists, the most convenient way to read scientific and practical articles was through the electronic version on the websites of the journals (62.20%). Informing doctors with articles with well-illustrated clinical cases (72.66%) and lectures along with practical materials (64.75%) are of the greatest interest to the vast majority of dentists. Conclusion: According to the analytical results, it is shown that the main ways of obtaining scientific and practical information for dentists in the process of self-directed learning is the active involvement of the materials gained on the lectures, scientific and practical events, from Internet resources, from scientific and methodological literature, from scientific articles of domestic and foreign English-language professional journals.