How the Covid-19 pandemic has changed dental studies

Since the beginning of last year, everything has revolved around one topic - the corona pandemic. The lockdown affected all students, but it was particularly hard for us dentists. Why? Hardly any course of study is as practical as dentistry. Nevertheless, face-to-face events were often simply canceled. This left universities and students with a lot of questions and uncertainties. How are prep courses and the like supposed to continue? In this blog post, we summarize what has changed for us in the last year. We ask ourselves: is there anything positive about the changes?

All beginnings are difficult – teaching from analogue to digital

As always, it takes practice to master something perfectly. Our professors and lecturers felt the same way when the talk turned to online teaching. At first, everyone was shocked and overwhelmed. No one had yet had to deal with this exceptional situation. Digitalization and technical competence were still in their infancy. And yet, everyone had to make the best of the situation. So the lectures and courses from the (pre-)clinical phase were held online. For the students, working from home was initially a challenge. Absolutely no one could imagine not going to the university every day for lectures. Nevertheless, who would have thought: There were a few advantages. For example, the sometimes time-consuming journey to the university was no longer necessary. The lectures from home in the morning made the day more relaxed. For those who had hardly any or no face-to-face events, there was more time for family and friends. Especially if you have left home for your studies: Because of the constantly high stress level during the semester, you rarely manage to visit your home extensively.

Contacts and exchanges are missing

And definitely! The situation is particularly bad for freshmen. No freshmen's week, no events to get to know each other, no pub crawls. The first few weeks are particularly important for making contacts and building friendships and study groups. The higher semesters are also affected by the contact restrictions. They have not been able to study together or meet privately. To remedy the situation, the university student councils are setting up online get-togethers. The FVDZ (Free Association of German Dentists) organized a Digital Dentistry Day. This provided an opportunity for students from Germany to exchange ideas about the pandemic-related situations at universities.

Organisation of practical and treatment courses

Holding the treatment courses online - is that a joke? Actually, it's impossible. At least that was the view of the majority of students. Nevertheless, a solution had to be found so that the courses were not canceled and the standard period of study was not changed. So the group size in the practical courses was minimized. In some cases, individual tasks were modified so that individual steps could already be carried out at home - or were eliminated altogether.

In the clinical treatment courses, the group size was also reduced and the distance between the individual treatment units increased. Treating students, patients and supervising doctors often have to present a negative COVID test. In addition, everyone protects themselves as best as possible with an FFP-2 mask and an additional visor. However, the adjustments to the treatment courses varied from university to university.

Hope through the COVID-19 vaccines

The world is hoping that the vaccines will finally bring normality back. And vaccination offers protection, especially for people who work closely with patients. Our fellow students in the clinic are directly affected by this. At the end of February, the news finally came: some universities had already created vaccination offers for students in the clinic. Preclinical students have now been vaccinated, and some of them already have full vaccination protection through a second vaccination. So hopefully things are looking up.

The consequences of suspending teaching

"Oh, it's only a year," you think at first. But this one year without an exam semester can have far-reaching consequences due to the suspension of teaching and exams. In addition to ongoing costs for housing and living expenses, practices and clinics also feel the consequences. But what exactly do they look like? After the exam period, practices, clinics and the like usually wait longingly for fresh supplies in the form of new assistant doctors. Due to the pandemic, bottlenecks in patient treatment can arise due to the lack of graduates. But there are a few problems not only in the period after graduation: For students in lower semesters, this can mean a study backlog, as everyone wants to take the same courses at the same time. Logically, you don't want to do an extra round. But the capacity in the practical (treatment) courses in particular is very limited. There are only a certain number of phantom heads and the few patients for the treatment courses are also in high demand. (Pssst: If the phantom heads are rare, you can rent them here .)

The conclusion? Fortunately, students and lecturers are committed to continuing teaching at Germany's universities. It continues, even if we would have preferred to have done without the semesters during the Covid-19 pandemic.