This content was catalogued by the ADA between March 2020 and February 2021 to address dentists’ needs for COVID-19 related practice guidance.
‘The American Dental Association (ADA) developed various strategies to guide dentists during the COVID-19 Pandemic.’
The insight about the strategies and approaches to their formulation, intended use, publication/posting date and utility as assessed by number of downloads and visits from ADA.org was evaluated with respect to the chronology of the pandemic.
The ADA also established a centralized online hub to spread the latest COVID-19 evidence, policy and guidance. In April 2020, the ADA received more than 2,360 COVID-19 related member queries.
Initial ADA guidance to mitigate virus transmission relied on information about safety considerations extrapolated from medical rather than dental settings to produce several decision algorithms (16,529 downloads) and a reference document (22,176 downloads) citing supporting information sources.
The initial guidance algorithms were for provision of urgent and emergency care and addressed patient screening, use of professional protective equipment, operatory disinfection and patients’ treatment.
A companion document that defined urgent and emergency care (58,551 downloads) was reviewed by the ADA Board of Trustees.
As restrictions on provision of dental care were lifted, increased member volunteer engagement was considered prudent to better ensure the relevance and feasibility of the guidance informing about a more comprehensive range of dental care. The resultant return-to-work toolkit (32,441 downloads) has been accessed more than 640,370 times.
Source: Medindia
