How has coronavirus affected your University?

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ravenjats

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Hey, just curious how things are going on where you are. I'm studying at an Australian university and our schools med program has already cancelled all clinical days indefinitely at the hospital to follow the government's recommendations. However, the dental school is still just business as usual, even though we're at the same hospital.
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Had a pt cancel today over fear of the virus. They are very much elderly.
 
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Spring break next week. Lectures will be online following the break. Clinic is business as usual.

UPDATE: Has changed since. Clinics is NOT business as usual.
 
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Spring day as usual
 
Patients are cancelling more frequently and we're starting to trial online classes this week
 
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Boards patients are starting to cancel, and the talk of shutting down the clinic has been floated around by administration. Nothing yet.
 
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Extended spring break followed by online classes at least Apr 1st.
 
Cancelled all lectures + labs for Thurs + Friday, but clinic is open. The week after is spring break.
No info and what's going to happen afterwards yet.
 
BasicG said:
Patients are cancelling more frequently and we're starting to trial online classes this week
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All classes and labs will be closing starting today. All classes will be shifting online next week onward.

Clinic is staying open though..even though hundreds of patients pass through there making it more likely for the virus to spread. Idk why they would cancel all our classes and sim labs because when we're not in school, we're at home studying/relaxing. If anything, clinic should be closed if the higher ups are really that worried, but they gotta make that $$$
 
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BasicG said:
All classes and labs will be closing starting today. All classes will be shifting online next week onward.

Clinic is staying open though..even though hundreds of patients pass through there making it more likely for the virus to spread. Idk why they would cancel all our classes and sim labs because when we're not in school, we're at home studying/relaxing. If anything, clinic should be closed if the higher ups are really that worried, but they gotta make that $$$
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For clinic: I think it's about D4 finishing their requirements on time.
For pre-clinic: it's about not infecting our instructors, since they are at a higher risk.
 
gov made it mandatory to close schools for 2 weeks so clinics are also closed.
 
Firik said:
For clinic: I think it's about D4 finishing their requirements on time.
For pre-clinic: it's about not infecting our instructors, since they are at a higher risk.
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There are more instructors down in clinic though. If clinic is open, they should keep everything open
 
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Both Pitt and Penn closed clinic. CDCA announced cancellations of exams trough april 12th.

As a 4th year in a different school with (minimal) requirements left, I wonder how this affects things. If clinic does resume for some of us, its still unlikely you will be able to see many patients. Patients are terrified to come in.
 
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CDCA exam is still happening this weekend 3/14-15 in Michigan. I know schools such as UMich and Indiana have not announced closure of their clinics yet.

To those of you at schools where clinics have shut down, are D4s with minimal requirements left allowed leniency to graduate? Or will they make everyone stay after?
 
Yeah I am taking the CDCA at UDM tomorrow. Pretty crazy to take a patient based examination during a pandemic. Truly an un-ethical decison to whoever decided to proceed. Patients are cancelling left and right and I dont blame them. They will be forced to be around a bunch of people for 3 hours with a procedure that should take 30 minutes/

If we are being completely honest, this is only going to get worse. The 4/12 date is arbitrary and I can't see a scenario where a country as big as this US reponds to this like S Korea or Japan. The CDCA may need to look at an alternative test.

On the bright side - this may be the straw that breaks the camels back in terms of a pt based examination.
 
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Rumor has it southern california Western boarda cancelled, and Loma Linda, USC, UCLA all debating and likely to cancel.

i think its crazy to Cancel. Every surface is disinfected and if patients are screened for fevers etc on the way in.
If they push it back? Till when? June? Its only going to get worse. Then how many of us are stranded without licenses?
Im glad Im going into residency.
 
The problem with this disease from what I understand is that its latency period seems shorter than its incubation period. As a result, infectious carriers can be asymptomatic but still spread the disease to others around them. That's why screening measures may not help curtail the spread.

imo, one way to justify keeping clinics open would be if dental clinics also served as testing centers for the disease.

I understand that people are concerned about licenses and lost revenue, but now is a good time to band together and slow down the spread of this damn thing. What's the point of having a license if the economy is in the ****ter and patients are too sick/scared to walk into your clinic? Closing school clinics for a couple of weeks right after spring break may be a good idea, after which one can reassess whether or not they should remain closed based on the situation on the ground.
 
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BYU4you said:
Rumor has it southern california Western boarda cancelled, and Loma Linda, USC, UCLA all debating and likely to cancel.

i think its crazy to Cancel. Every surface is disinfected and if patients are screened for fevers etc on the way in.
If they push it back? Till when? June? Its only going to get worse. Then how many of us are stranded without licenses?
Im glad Im going into residency.
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As of now, UCLA has decided that it will not cancel, but that can easily change.
 
BYU4you said:
Rumor has it southern california Western boarda cancelled, and Loma Linda, USC, UCLA all debating and likely to cancel.

i think its crazy to Cancel. Every surface is disinfected and if patients are screened for fevers etc on the way in.
If they push it back? Till when? June? Its only going to get worse. Then how many of us are stranded without licenses?
Im glad Im going into residency.
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Yeah it’s pretty concerning.... They should just auto pass us for the clinical sections of the exam:D. A&M hasn’t said anything about wether our clinic is going to close or what’s going to happen with WREB. Things aren’t looking good though... looks like OU cancelled/ rescheduled ADEX.
 
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Clinics need to close. Keeping them open is a public health disaster. A look online at a few papers shows early data that 44% of infections in Italy were caused by asymptomatic individuals (exact communicable period is still being researched, I’ve seen everything from 5, to 9, to 21 days).

Some schools are screening patients at the door, but 1/2 of the patients who can cause infection will pass any test (currently available) that you throw at them. What happens then in your typical dental school open-bay clinic, when you clean teeth with a cavitron and blast an infectious aerosol into the room? Or the asymptomatic infected patient sits next to an elderly person and coughs in the waiting room? Sneezes on the front desk people? You give a potentially deadly virus to a vulnerable patient population. I had an immunocompromised patient in my chair just last week.

I feel really bad for current D4s. Boards patients dropping left and right, licensing uncertainty, etc. Dental school is stressful enough without all of this additional stuff! The thing is: at the end of the day, this is a blip in our careers. A few months. What can’t be shaken is our ethics. We can’t let fear of licensing/exams/etc get in the way of the hippocratic oath, which we all took. We must put the safety of our patients above all else.
 
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Schools should graduate and give a pass to all D4s at this point. All commencement ceremonies have been cancelled at major universities. Externships and away rotations have been cancelled. CDCA examiners would not even hold an orientation session for the D4 candidates yesterday evening (opted for an online one), yet they expect the D4s to take the exam that weekend without a proper orientation. But even after all that...the dental school clinic is doing 6 month recall prophies.
 
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Here’s something for you all to think about, the university’s medical center where I’m at considers intubation and throat swabs as aerosol generating procedures. Compare those to your high speed handpieces or ultrasonics. There’s not much in medicine that compares to dentistry’s potential to create infectious aerosols. You going to be wearing a CAPR during your clinic sessions? “Hi, Mr. Jones. Let’s get this #18 occlusal taken care of, shall we?”

71B93F34-1837-4161-AB85-3A7D26CCF3E8.jpeg


Big Hoss

PS: I realize the model in the picture would have more credibility with you all if she were wearing Figs scrubs. I apologize for the shortcoming, but my point still stands.
 
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Big Time Hoosier said:
PS: I realize the model in the picture would have more credibility with you all if she were wearing Figs scrubs. I apologize for the shortcoming, but my point still stands.
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I laughed out loud.

Yeah... this is no bueno for both dental students and dental businesses. The whole situation with the WREB is concerning to say the least. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens.
 
Big Time Hoosier said:
Here’s something for you all to think about, the university’s medical center where I’m at considers intubation and throat swabs as aerosol generating procedures. Compare those to your high speed handpieces or ultrasonics. There’s not much in medicine that compares to dentistry’s potential to create infectious aerosols. You going to be wearing a CAPR during your clinic sessions? “Hi, Mr. Jones. Let’s get this #18 occlusal taken care of, shall we?”

View attachment 298522

Big Hoss

PS: I realize the model in the picture would have more credibility with you all if she were wearing Figs scrubs. I apologize for the shortcoming, but my point still stands.
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Lmfao, the clinic administration at my school would probably counter by saying "It's okay, just use a rubber dam." That seems to be their go-to solution for nearly everything :smack:
 
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Indiana university dental school here. Online class only, Clinics and preclinical lab cancelled til April 6th. Emergency patients only. Citywide mandate of no congregations of more than 250 people. Have a feeling this one is going to keep getting pushed out as the virus spreads
 
Just received a notice from the WREB liaison faculty at my school. WREB is canceled throughout the entire United States until at least April 20th, still waiting for an official notice though.
 
Michigan just announced clinics are closed except for emergency patients.
 
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Are we not trained to deal with infectious people every day? I just don't understand the rationale for closing clinic if we're using proper sterile techniques which we should have been doing daily anyway
 
luisfigo said:
Are we not trained to deal with infectious people every day? I just don't understand the rationale for closing clinic if we're using proper sterile techniques which we should have been doing daily anyway
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You mean the clinic with over 100+ patients in a confined space. most of which are over the age of 65 with chronic diseases all holding their mouths open for 2+ hours with spit and aerosolized particulates flying all over and being suspended in the air.

Dont see a problem.
 
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What is going to happen if licensure exams are cancelled for longer than expected......
 
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Has any school changed their graduation requirements for D4s yet?
 
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Orin_Incandenza said:
Our clinic is closed for at least 2 weeks (except for emergency patients). Our state dental society recommends closing for at least 3 weeks and the CDC announced last night that it doesn't recommend that people gather in groups of 50+ (aka a dental school clinic) for the next 8 weeks. I don't think clinic will open until summer. If this happens I think D4s should be asking for tuition reimbursements because all of our education at this time is in clinic. Source: CDC Recommends Against Gatherings Of 50 Or More; States Close Bars And Restaurants
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I will reiterate what I said in your other thread: Be careful asking for tuition money back as it will likely aggravate your clinic/school admin. Your priority as a D4 should be pushing them to ease up on remaining graduation requirements and letting you graduate on time. It would be easy for them to "waive" next semester's tuition and just make you stay an entire semester, but this would also create a massive backlog of students, etc.. Let's try to be smarter about all this.
 
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resiliens said:
I will reiterate what I said in your other thread: Be careful asking for tuition money back as it will likely aggravate your clinic/school admin. Your priority as a D4 should be pushing them to ease up on remaining graduation requirements and letting you graduate on time. It would be easy for them to "waive" next semester's tuition and just make you stay an entire semester. Let's try to be smarter about all this.
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I agree, D4s should focus on pushing for their schools to let them graduate on time. Theoretically is it even possible for dental schools to make everyone stay an extra semester?
 
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cloth_alert00 said:
I agree, D4s should focus on pushing for their schools to let them graduate on time. Theoretically is it even possible for dental schools to make everyone stay an extra semester?
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I’m not sure about other schools but, my school barely has clinic space for the current D3 and D4 class. With the D2s starting clinic this summer I highly doubt they will hold a large number of D4s back just due to the lack of chairs. For me graduation itself isn’t an issue. Graduating without a license is what I’m worried about.
 
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Advance said:
I’m not sure about other schools but, my school barely has clinic space for the current D3 and D4 class. With the D2s starting clinic this summer I highly doubt they will hold a large number of D4s back just due to the lack of chairs. For me graduation itself isn’t an issue. Graduating without a license is what I’m worried about.
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I don’t think they would let the D2s start clinic because they haven’t finished their D2 classes. I foresee preclinical being an issue with bench labs/sim labs being occupied with new D1s when the current D1s and D2s are still not finished.
 
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schmoob said:
In the meantime student loans keep accumulating interest.
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I believe one of the very first things Trump did was to freeze all interest on student loans actually.
 
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Is any other school NOT canceling clinic like ours? We're planning to open after spring break this week with slight adjustments.
 
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Ivy.ch said:
Is any other school NOT canceling clinic like ours? We're planning to open after spring break this week with slight adjustments.
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not sure what school you're at, but I heard the AT Still schools are still seeing patients as usual (could be changed by now)
 
Ivy.ch said:
Is any other school NOT canceling clinic like ours? We're planning to open after spring break this week with slight adjustments.
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Mine hasn’t said anything about canceling. So I assume come Monday it’s business as usual.
 
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