Educational and Professional Challenges of Dentistry During Covid-19 Pandemic; a Literature Review

In the year 2020 Covid-19 disease caused an extensive pandemic world-wide. It arose from Wuhan city in China and spread to whole world resulting in many deaths. Immediately, researchers conducted many studies to assess the etiology, epidemiology, ways of transmission and protective instructions and materials against Covid-19, but still there are not enough studies about challenges which dentists, dental students and patients referring to dental clinics encounter regarding their social, economic and psychological status. In this review, authors tried to focus on the literature regarding these problems. The literature search was conducted using natural language keywords and controlled vocabulary using MeSH through PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar from 1st of January 2020 to 21st of November 2020. In addition, Gray literature and manual search of references were also performed. Articles with low quality methodology were excluded based on critical appraisal. The articles about the effects of Covid-19 on “dental education”, “pediatric dentistry”, “geriatric dentistry” and “dental professions and practice” were included in the study. The results showed that due to the practical nature of the dental profession and education and the importance of social distance during this pandemic (Covid-19), the dental community and even patients in need of dental treatment have been affected by this pandemic in different ways that should be considered by health officials for facilitating feedback to this pandemic.