Self-reported compliance to recommended face-coverings, during the COVID-19 pandemic, among Canadian dentists and dental hygienists.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, all Canadian dental and dental hygiene regulators recommended enhanced infection prevention and control (IPC). Among a range of enhanced IPC strategies, the focus was on the type and combination of face-coverings oral health care providers (OHCPs) should use under different circumstances. Further, the regulatory bodies frequently updated their IPC strategies through various pandemic stages. Although some studies have reviewed them, little is known about the evolution of the face-covering recommendation in the IPC strategy as the COVID-19 outbreak patterns varied. Furthermore, there is a lack of research on IPC implementation during COVID-19. A way to measure implementation would be to calculate the compliance of OHCPs.Objectives: 1) To document and compare face-covering recommendations in IPC strategies provided by various provincial dental and dental hygiene regulatory bodies in Canada during different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) To estimate the rate of compliance with the recommended face-coverings, among dentists and dental hygienists (DHs) in Canada, after the resumption of non-essential oral health care provision.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the IPC strategies shared by dental (n =78) and dental hygiene (n= 57) regulatory bodies from 10 provinces and three territories of Canada from March 2020 to January 2022. This information was compared to the face-covering data from two prospective cohort studies on dentists (n=644) and DHs (n=876) practicing in Canada over the period from July 2020 to January 2022. We assigned a face-covering compliance score for the self-reported combination of mask and eye protection based on the provincial IPC strategy applicable to the participants' date of response. The proportion of participants who are compliant at different levels were estimated along with the corresponding 95% confidence intervals for each data collection points.Results: The overall median number of IPC strategies shared by the regional regulatory bodies over the study period was nine, with a maximum of 21 from Nova Scotia and a minimum of one from Nunavut. During the initial phases of COVID-19, five out of 12 provinces recommended using both glasses/goggles and visors for aerosol-generating procedures (AGPs). In contrast, only three out of 10 provinces recommended it in the following urgent care phase. Similarly, the mask recommendation changed, with seven out of 12 provinces strictly specifying N95 respirator or superior, in contrast, 11 out of 13 provinces allowed alternative masks on resuming non-essential care. Throughout the study duration, the proportions of fully compliant participants averaged 36.5% (CI of 23.6% to 51.7%), and 66.7% (CI of 57.7% to 74.7%) among dental hygienists. The compliance rate for dentists showed considerable variance over the study period ranging from 59.2% (CI, 53.2% to 65.0%) to 84.8% (CI, 80.1% to 88.6%). On the other hand, the compliance rate for DHs showed only minor variation across time.Conclusion: Analysis of the provincial COVID-19-specific enhanced IPC guidelines for OHCPs revealed the difference in re-opening strategy and face-coverings recommended during the same time frame for dentists and DHs across Canada. There was a drop in compliance for both dentists and DHs in the winter of 2021, and a considerable difference in the pattern of compliance of the two professionals. The findings of this study are an important contribution in terms of overall comprehensive knowledge concerning the IPC guideline documents and their implementation among the OHCPs during the COVID-19 pandemic
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".