What are our ethical obligations as dental practitioners? Where do our ethical and moral frameworks come from? And does it even matter? An article a few weeks ago discussed ethics in the context of over-servicing in dentistry, which generated a lot of discussion and some reflection about what we mean by ethics, and what guides ethical practice in healthcare.
‘First do no harm’.
‘Always put the interests of your patients ahead of your own.’
These are statements should be familiar to most health practitioners, and are seen as being the defining ethical principles that define being a health professional. Is this enough to provide guidance in the modern world of healthcare, with growing consumerism and business pressures?
It’s important to reflect on where our ethics come from - because they are not created in a vacuum. Philosophers from the time of Socrates have been grappling with concepts of what is good, just or virtuous for thousands of years, and as a consequence our ethical frameworks have grown and shifted over time. There is also an important distinction to be made between our ethical obligations as a health care provider to individual patients, and our social responsibility as part of a profession to ensure that there is a focus on improving the health of the whole community.
It’s also worth considering how we might apply our ethical principles in any given situation. Are ethics black and white, and will an ethical person always act ethically, or might circumstances influence how we act? How does this impact on how we teach ethics?
In this episode of the Dental As Anything podcast, I talk to Dr Jodie Heap, a clinical dentist and social theorist to help us grapple with some of these important ethical issues.
You can listen to the podcast here, and it is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts - don’t forget to follow/subscribe, and share with your friends.
Ethics, professionalism and the imagination.