COVID-19: fatores associados ao medo de profissionais e estudantes de odontologia de infectaremA família em decorrência da prática odontológica

Abstract

COVID-19: Factors associated with dentists' and dental students' fear of infecting their relatives as a result of clinical practice

Discovered in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic in March 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). COVID-19 is an infectious disease that can lead to death. Transmission occurs by inhalation, ingestion and contact with droplets of saliva, containing the virus. Exposed to aerosols containing water, saliva and blood, dental staff and dental students face an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infections. The literature has shown that dentists and dentistry students have been facing different fears, such as the fear of becoming infected, infecting their family members, losing manual dexterity and anxiety related to the new educational and economic scenario caused by the pandemic and the risks of practicing dentistry. The rapid and easy transmission of the virus, social restrictions, lack of knowledge about the disease, its consequences and uncertainty about how long this situation would last cause anxiety and fear as constant feelings. The aim of this study was to evaluate the factors associated with the fear of dentists and students of infecting their families with COVID-19 as a result of dental practice. Structured questionnaires were built in Google Forms and sent by email, WhatsApp and social media to dentists working in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, and students from the School of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (SD-UFMG), were used to the data collection. The dependent variable was “the fear of infecting the family”. The independent variables were related to the sociodemographic profile, use of personal protective equipment (PPE) before and during the pandemic, actions considered important to prevent infection, knowledge and feelings about the pandemic and the future of the profession. Analyzes were performed using Pearson's Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests (p≤0.05). Eighty-three professionals and sixty-five students responded to the questionnaire. The prevalence of fear was 84.3% and 61.5%, respectively. For professionals, the non-use of surgical masks (p=0.038), the use of PFF2/PFF3/N95 masks (p=0.043), the usage maintenance of cloth lab coats (p=0.013), the fear of being infected by the patient or co-worker (p=<0.001) and greater anxiety during the pandemic (p=0.004) were associated with the fear outcome. For students, reports of actions to prevent COVID-19 such as frequent hand cleaning (p=0.028) and avoiding the use of aerosol-generating instruments (p=0.027), not having the disease (p=0.038), feeling of greater anxiety during the pandemic period (p=0.047) and that Dentistry will undergo major post-pandemic changes (p=0.020) were associated with fear. Therefore, the fear of infecting the family made dentists more careful about some actions to avoid contamination by COVID-19, made them fearful about the infection and more anxious. Students also became more cautious during dental practice, more anxious and expectations of changes in dentistry after this period.