Impressions
“allowed” to prescribe opiates from home over the phone. Wait a
minute. Haven’t we just spent the last several years trying to NOT
prescribe opiates?
The PDA board, especially your now immediate past-president
Dr. Charlie Incalcaterra, our new president Dr. Jim Tauberg and our
ADA trustee Dr. Linda Himmelberger went into overdrive
advocating for us with the governor and the Pennsylvania
Department of Health to try and get this these latest severe
restrictions lifted. By Thursday March 26 those onerous restrictions
were lifted as long as we had the appropriate PPE to treat the
emergency patient. OK, now to try to find an N95 mask. There was
a worldwide shortage, and even if you could find them the prices
were outrageous. With the virus taking over Italy and ravaging
New York City, PPE was almost impossible to secure. Dr. Tauberg
led a task force to try and secure N95 masks for our members and
have them fit tested, which is required by OSHA. He presented his
findings on a Board of Trustees Zoom meeting and PDA began
to offer the mask and fit test for a member and one staff member
so we could start treating our emergency patients.
As the month of March ended, President Trump announced the
“stay at home order” was now extended until April 30. PDA was
sending out emails and PDA GO alerts every day, almost every
hour, with updated information. ADA developed online CE almost
immediately to respond to the crisis. My students at LECOM and
all the dental students in Pennsylvania and across the country
were now also quarantined at home and attending online Zoom
lectures rather than treating their patients in the clinic. The clinical
licensing exams were cancelled, with rescheduling TBD. We were
encouraged to support our local restaurants by ordering take out
since there was no on premises dining allowed. The federal
government passed multiple stimulus bills to help businesses and
individuals. Unemployment shot up to almost 30 million people,
the worst since the Great Depression almost a century ago. All
schools were cancelled through the end of the school year with
learning shifted to online formats. All commencements and
graduation activities were cancelled. Baseball has yet to start. We
now all wear a mask in public and stand 6 feet apart, the “proper
social distance.”
Every day in April we saw the president, the secretary of health
and our county executive doing press conferences on TV to
update us. We also were told to stay at home until May 8. PDA
organized the N95 fit test across the state and prepared to offer a
second round for staff. Pennsylvania’s Dental Meeting in the
Poconos was cancelled and our new officers and board members
were sworn in at a virtual online board meeting instead. The ADA
Dentist Student Lobby Day in Washington, DC was also cancelled.
The ADA created a science based toolkit full of guidelines to
restart our offices when we get the green light to do so. A dental
health coalition including the PDA, Pennsylvania Academy of
General Dentistry, Pennsylvania Dental Hygienists Association,
Pennsylvania Association of Pediatric Dentists, and the dental
school deans endorsed those guidelines in a letter to the governor
and DOH on May 1 to encourage the reopening of dental offices
in PA. The governor announced that certain counties in the
commonwealth would be allowed to reopen some businesses on
May 8 if the area had 50 or fewer cases per 100,000 people. We
hoped this was the beginning of a return to whatever the new
normal will be. I don’t think anyone knows at this point.
It was the best of times as the New Year and new decade dawned
in January, and within a short two and half months it became the
worst of times, at least in my lifetime. But the best came out in so
many, including the front line health care workers, first responders,
the truck drivers, the folks at our grocery stores, delivery folks, all the
people who have managed to work or learn at home and my wife
Mary, who went to work as a nurse in the operating room while her
dentist husband stayed home.
The BEST of our profession came out in our ADA and PDA who were
advocating from the beginning to protect us, the public and our
profession. There has never been a better time to be a member and
the ROI of that membership is invaluable! We owe a HUGE debt of
gratitude and thanks to our PDA Board of Trustees, especially
Charlie, Jim and Linda and our PDA staff. The staff has had to work
at home since March 20 and have had to manage this crisis in ways
they never imagined. Thanks to our interim executive director,
Mary Donlin, for managing her staff from afar and remaining highly
effective. And finally thank you to Rob Pugliese, our director of
communications and his staff for communicating. PDA Go updates,
PDA eNews blasts and a Pennsylvania Dental Journal issue were just
some of what we have seen since this all started.
Thanks to all! The best of times are what we make of them and they
will come again for all! Stay safe PDA!
— STR3
P.S. - On March 19 I woke up with nowhere to go, so I decided not to
shave. We all know that any haircuts we had scheduled had to also
be postponed. I have been overdue for almost a month. My usual
photo here has been replaced with my selfie right before I had to shave
to the N95 mask fitting.
6
MAY/JUNE 2020 | PENNSYLVANIA DENTAL JOURNAL