STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL

ORTHODONTICS

The impact of COVID-19 on orthodontic postgraduate programs in Balkan countries: Results from an international survey by orthodontic residents

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25241/stomaeduj.2021.8(4).art.4

Abstract

Design Multidisciplinary survey conducted via a web-based questionnaire for orthodontic postgraduate students.
Settings Orthodontic residents from 9 countries were surveyed between April and May 2021. The majority was from Romania 52.53% (n=83), Turkey 21.52% (n=34), Croatia 6.33 (n=10) and less than 5% of participants from the other countries with Bulgaria 4.43% (n=7), Republic of Moldova 4.43% (n=7), Greece 3.80% (n=6), Bosnia and Herzegovina 3.16%(n=5), North Macedonia 1.90% (n=3) and Serbia 1.90% (n=3).
Results The questionnaire was completed by 158 orthodontic postgraduate students from the Balkan countries, of which 75.95% (n=120) were females and 24.05% (n=38) were males. The average age group of the respondents was between 25-34 years (84.81% [n=134] of the participants), while there was a significant difference (p<0.05) with students from Romania with 2.3 times more females from Turkey with 2.4 times more males in comparison to other countries. A higher number of the participants 37.34% (n=59) were working in both the private and public sectors. Most of the orthodontic residents were mostly in their 2nd year of studies 72.78% (n=115). The majority of the postgraduate students (n=93, 58.86%) altered their plans and service delivery following the instructions of their institutions. The impact of coronavirus was evident, since a decrease in outpatient visits before and after the pandemic was evident, (from 15 patients to 12 patients respectively per day), with an average of 6 working hours under current circumstances.
Conclusions In this first international survey for orthodontic residents, widespread changes in the orthodontic education programs during the outbreak of COVID-19 are reported.

Keywords
COVID-19; Pandemic; Orthodontic Residency; Service Delivery; Orthodontics.

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STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL (Stoma Edu J) is a new international dental journal whose main purpose is to inform researchers, educators, graduates, postgraduates and practitioners about the latest trends in the field, which followed, would bring immediate and lasting benefits to the patients; and about opinions of the most authorized specialists on what is best in current practice, for the good of both, patient and dentist.
STOMATOLOGY EDU JOURNAL (Stoma Edu J) is a peer-reviewed, open access international dental journal to be database indexed, meant to contribute to the development and completion of the medical training of practitioners as Dr. Greene Vardiman Black stated: “the professional man has no right to be other than a continual student”.
Open access journal, means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.