COVID-19: complications with consent and confidentiality for dental practices

Abstract

Telemedicine has revolutionised the world in that remote access to the provision of patient care has been made possible. This has proved to be exceptionally useful during the COVID-19 pandemic but while telemedicine is benefitting those with medical problems, teledentistry is still slow to be implemented, with most clinics not having the software in their practices that allow this, and also no safe and official portals of communication between staff regarding patient care away from the dental practice. Our dental colleagues are having to undertake consultations with patients through non-secure means such as Zoom, WhatsApp or FaceTime and have no remote access to patient notes to document these conversations. This poses a breach to patient confidentiality. Nevertheless, owing to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, there is a growing need to converse with patients (and discuss their welfare between colleagues) away from the dental practice.