Op-Ed: COVID-19 and Our Professional Pillars
By Dr. Lionel Lenkinski, 7T9, Executive Director, Canadian Dental Protective Association
In this unprecedented time, our profession is faced with challenges that no one was adequately prepared for. Our personal safety, as well as that of our family and friends, is paramount, and many in our community face serious challenges. Based on the directive communicated by our regulator that was issued by the Acting Chief Medical Officer of Health, our practices currently provide emergency services only.
For me, and I think for many in our profession, the current moment has become a time for introspection and analysis. What information is accurate and trustworthy? How can we tell whether the information we are receiving, and in some cases, redistributing, is based on science, rather than on political or even commercial motives and opportunism?
This has become an increasingly visible vulnerability for our profession, especially during the current pandemic, and perhaps made worse by the fact that we tend to practice in isolation. During this global health emergency we need to prioritize sources that will help us receive trustworthy, timely and accurate information; readily access and leverage interpretation of directives from our regulatory experts; provide reliable advice to patients and our communities; and leverage trustworthy and responsible leadership. And all of this, I believe, will have to originate and emanate from the well-established pillars of our profession — not the chat rooms and the non-vetted entities that have started flooding our inboxes with potentially incorrect information and advice.
These pillars, as I see them, are governments, regulators, provincial and national associations, and the faculties of dentistry. These organizations have always been the most reliable sources for information for our profession, due to their mature infrastructure and ability to analyze, assess and speak to us with fact-based authority, from an objective and non-commercial vantagepoint.
Now, more than ever, we need to be hypercritical of these peripheral sources. We should make it our professional and social imperative to stay connected to our organizational pillars. These bodies are the repositories of science and foundational information, making them central and critical for our provision of appropriate, safe and professional care. Through them, is an infrastructure that will allow us to bridge the professional distance in our delivery model, and thus we should rely on our profession’s pillars to guide us through this experience.
Later, after this crisis, there will be time to analyze and muddle through the good, the bad and the ugly. In the meantime, we all should realize, if we have not already, that a similar or another crisis can and may happen again. So let’s make it our business to be better prepared.
Accurate and up-to-date information on dentistry and COVID -19 can be found at these links:
RCDSO: https://www.rcdso.org/en-ca/rcdso-members/2019-novel-coronavirus
ODA: https://oda.ca/156-you-and-your-dentist/478-covid-19-updates-from-the-oda
Scholarly and scientific resources compiled by the University of Toronto Dentistry Library:
Dr. Lionel Lenkinski, 7T9, is Executive Director / CEO of the Canadian Dental Protective Association, and an endodontist in private practice in Toronto.
Photo: Dr. Lionel Lenkinski (Jeff Comber)