The Phantom of the Opera-tory!
The current COVID 19 pandemic, poses high risk of cross-infection to Dentists, auxiliaries as well as the patients. Most dental procedures require close contact with the patient’s oral cavity, saliva, blood, and respiratory tract secretions. Saliva is rich in COVID 19 viral load and many patients who are asymptomatic may be carriers. Under such conditions, clinical practice on patients for dental students is definitely not recommended. However an alternate and viable solution for this would be to train students on dental simulators, that mimic the patients in all respect.
Use of dental simulators is not only a safe option, but it is also a widely used solution for all dental training and practices. Various options are available including manikins with Torso that can be mounted on to the dental chairs, ones that can be fixed on regular tables or workbenches, ones that can be placed in place of the dental chair headrest and many more. There are a handful reliable solution providers in this arena. viz. Columbia Dentoform USA, Frasaco Germany and Navadha India. Navadha has solutions for Dental Simulators for Dental Chairs, benches and other mounting options. The Universal iSim bench mount model from Navadha is one of the relatively economical versions, and has all these features and more.
In a simulated clinical setting, dental students can operate on manikin phantom heads equipped with jaws and Artificial or natural extracted teeth; together with, tooth drilling apparatus to learn and master technical skills required for tooth restoration prior to treating patients thereby transforming them into practicing professionals. This helps the students to learn how to collect data, interpret and synthesize findings, evaluate critically the effect of actions taken, perform procedures skillfully, and relate to patients in an ethical and caring manner.
Hence apart from ensuring the overall safety of the students, it offers an enriching and high quality experience even in the wake of the current pandemic crises. Thus we can safely conclude that training on Dental Simulators is the most viable, pragmatic and easily accessible option in the current scenario, and probably in the times to come!
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