Highlights:

CSW no. 3, vol. 15, 2024

Guest Editorial

Special dental Number

(Editorial)

DOI: 10.22359/cswhi_15_3_10

The contemporary universal healthcare industry is faced with a myriad of challenges that hinder public health efforts to a massive degree. These challenges include but are not limited to dental anxiety, physician burnout issues, and increasing stress among healthcare specialists. Nevertheless, concepts like patient-centric care, pharmacological outreach strategies, and digital practices in pharmacies are growing rapidly in Europe and worldwide, giving hope to the healthcare industry. Multidimensional approaches must be adapted and greatly implemented among patients, healthcare experts, and policymakers to ensure sustainable success in the healthcare industry.

Socio-economic aspects linked to and negatively affecting dental health greatly hamper the effectiveness of Germany’s healthcare industry. Many low-income individuals lack the socio-economic opportunities to curb their consumption of unhealthy sugary diets, and medical resources are inaccessible to them compared to high-income individuals. Burnout, the serious outcome of persistent job stress, manifests as physical and mental symptoms that greatly reduce workers’ general performance and affects many German workers. It is promoted by heavy workplace burdens, illegal workplace treatment, poor supportive management, and unclear job opportunities in many German businesses. Consequently, experts have realized that the development of resilience by workers is greatly linked to burnout prevention. For instance, workers can be constantly resilient by engaging in mindfulness training and stress management schemes. Also, many Europeans face mental health problems due to psychosocial issues including poor work-life equilibrium, unhealthy sleep patterns, and negative social lives.

Furthermore, burnout and other things like rowdy patients promote persistent stress among dentists globally, causing a reduction in the quality of patient care. This reduction is due to treatment accidents and poor communication with patients, among other issues. Another issue is dental anxiety, an adverse attitude toward oral treatment due to things like hospital odor, which affects many patients globally. It makes patients very hesitant and avoidant towards seeking oral care, hampering public health efforts (Deaconu, 2022). Additionally, many Europeans suffer from the deterioration of their oral health due to wide-ranging factors like poverty, and this ends up bringing about their suffering from chronic illnesses. An example of this is how periodontitis severity increases the risk of comorbid illnesses.

Nevertheless, Europe benefits from the concept of patient-centric care in dental care that is growing rapidly as individuals realize this concept is linked to improved patient contentment and public health. Health experts practice it by making patients’ requirements, preferences, and decisions a top priority when providing them with things like personalized care services and respectful treatment. In addition, individuals globally are practicing early intervention in children’s dental care, acknowledging that it influences their health path and establishes life-long behaviors. For instance, doctors constantly teach young children how to take care of their teeth, and they treat, monitor, and prevent dental issues from very early on. Moreover, German health experts are practicing pharmaceutical outreach practices to solve the issue of healthcare-based inequities in the country that are brought about by poverty, old age, and immigration. They practice that by effectively staffing portable health centers with proficient specialists and educating remote minority communities on how to cater to their health. Additionally, European professionals have developed digital and innovative pharmacy facilities that perform such activities as encouraging patients to use customized medication patches to promote great benefits like convenient patient treatment services. However, this digitization has caused some problems like law-breaking by digital pharmacies.

German lawmakers should earmark funds for practical global schemes to reduce oral health inequalities and issues, while at the same time making dental health a fundamental public health matter and a priority. For instance, they could implement community-linked dental health promotion schemes and provide less-costly oral treatment. To effectively alleviate burnout and stress in German and global health experts, an integral strategy must be enforced by workers, employers, and governments. Such strategies should include encouraging the development of work-life balance, advancing supportive job regulations, and offering opportunities for mental healthcare. Even though pharmaceutical outreach activities have been and are being implemented, some Europeans still cannot access healthcare services. Therefore, these activities must be all-inclusive, more easily accessible, and sustainable in the long-run to curb certain issues that come with them. Individuals must focus significantly on lifestyle modifications to promote positive psychosocial factors and curb mental health deterioration globally. Dentists can improve their positive relationships with patients and encourage them to practice different activities like aromatherapy to effectively deal with dental anxiety. Various strategies can be implemented to promote digital and innovative pharmacy efforts such as the creation of proper and relevant legislation by European policymakers.

                                                                                                                                                                  Dr. Reza Khorsand

                                                                                                                                           Internationale Studienberatung