Main description:

In the last two decades, more than ever before dentists must determine how to properly maintain their focus on ethics and professionalism in the face of powerful commercial pressures. While there is encouragement for ethical conduct within the dental profession, there is still relatively little assistance available to dentists and dental students for judging what conduct is ethically best in concrete situations. For many years, Dental Ethics at Chairside has served as an invaluable resource for tens of thousands of dentists and dentistry students, and this third edition of the gold standard in the field is thoroughly revised and updated. In addition to exploring ongoing and critical issues such as the patient-professional relationship, patients with compromised capacity, confidentiality, justice and the inadequacies of society's health care systems, and dentistry as a business, the third edition addresses emerging ethical issues related to conflicts of interest, dental professionalism, advertising and social media, the serious indebtedness of graduating dental students, bad outcomes and bad work, the explosion of aesthetic dentistry, acquiring new skills and new technology, the impact of the market on the professional-patient relationship, and many others. The book includes fourteen realistic cases and commentary about dilemmas in dentistry, as well as online resources for further research and study.

Contents:

Preface 1. The Dental Profession and Professional Ethics 2. Professional Ethics, Professionalism, and Patient Trust 3. The Questions of Professional Ethics 4. The Relationship between Patient and Professional5. The Central Practice Values of Dental Practice 6. Ethical Decision-Making and Conflicting Obligations 7. Patients with Compromised Capacity 8. Working Together 9. Bad Outcomes and Bad Work10. Managing an Ethical Dental Practice 11. Society's Health Care Resources and Access to Oral Health Care 12. Care of Patients vs. Third Party Payers and Other Bureaucracies 13. The Wrong Message and Why It Matters 14. The Obligations of Dentistry's Professional Organizations 15. Self-Formation and Dentistry's Future: Professionalism or Commercialism Appendix: Resources for Dental Professional Ethics and Professionalism Education Bibliography Index About the Authors