LAUSR

Our pediatric dentistry postdoctoral program trains 16 residents under the guidance of 9 full-time and >20 part-time faculty. We provide care in the nation’s second-largest children’s hospital, with ≈40,000 dental encounters per year. The pandemic drastically affected the way we provided care to our patients. Recommendations and mandates from federal, state, organized dentistry, and hospital entities made us reconsider how to provide urgent dental treatment while keeping our workforce healthy during unprecedented times. Community mitigationmeasures have been proposed to slow the spread of disease such as a novel influenza virus,1 delay the pandemic peak until pharmaceutical interventions, such as vaccines, are available, and to reduce stress on health care systems.2 However, social distancing techniques, such as working from home and spacing of 6 feet, are not applicable for clinical dentistry. Our department provides care in 6 different hospital venues. Under normal operations, this entails trainees and faculty interacting and comingling daily, along with staff and members in other departments. Pandemic guidance for healthcare settings has primarily focused on provider and patient screening and engineering controls, such as personal protective equipment. These precautions do not prevent community spread of virus from being transmitted in the workplace, threatening an entire department of exposure and quarantine. 2 SOLUTION