We are all suffering from COVID. To suffer from COVID, we didn’t necessarily have to be COVID +ve. We all suffered in one way or the other. Every human and every profession is affected we all had to go through a lot. Being a dental professional we had our own problems we are in very close proximity to our patients and saliva is all about droplets and COVID spreads through the same most of the dental clinics were shut on the day 1 due to many reasons fear, specification from the DCI, lack of infrastructure required. But still, ours was one of the few professions which could go on. We shut for 2 days at Dentem but then the directors of Dentem, Dr. Tanvir Singh, and Dr. Gunita Singh Decided that we shall not shut and the show must go one. We got so many calls in these 2 days from patients who were suffering from dental pain, their treatments were in a mess, their respective dentists had decided to shut so we decided that it will be unethical to shut we have to help these patients as they were not COVID positive but still suffering due to COVID.
So we became frontline warriors. We worked on sanitization and disinfection Donned in our PPE’s we were ready to help all those who needed us.
We adhere to the highest standard of safety precautions to prevent any possible transmission in our office.
- a) As the patient reaches outside the clinic thermal screening is done and patients are given protective disposable gowns to wear before entering the clinic.
- b) We use high-speed evacuation and advanced dental isolation systems whenever possible for required dental procedures producing aerosol to decrease possible exposure to an infectious agent.
- c) We are following up to 4 patients a day policy as we have only 4 dental chairs no chair is used again in a day.
- d) We clean and disinfect our office again after finishing our OPD every day including door handles, chairs, and bathrooms.
- e) Hourly appointment is given so that social distancing is taken care of.
- f) Cross ventilation, open windows, exhaust fans helps filters you name it we have it to ensure maximum safety to who so ever is coming to us.
Soon we realized that so many needed us more and more patients started approaching as they were by now fed up with eating antibiotics and waiting for the pandemic to pass the pain didn’t subside but they landed up with the ulcers in the stomach. Dental services fall in the essential services category and dental pain is the worst in the midst of all this. we Dentists can’t shut we had to work and save people from pain so we did that.
We are scared too. The COVID case are increasing day by day and so are the patients in or dental practice as now patients with pain want to get rid of there pain but we too have families we come back to our children at the end of the day we want to meet our parents on the weekend. But we don’t we maintain social distancing with our own kids too I don’t enter their room talk to them from a distance so though we are not positive yet we are also suffering from this pandemic. Dental professionals are suffering too. We are all suffering from corona but trying to serve as much.
