BOOK REVIEW

Reviewer: Thomas Hasegawa
Baylor College of Dentistry, Dallas, US

The American College of Dentists’ “Ethics Handbook for Dentists”

The American College of Dentists has a history of providing pocket-sized publications to dental schools and clinicians relating professionalism and dentistry. The purpose of the Ethics Handbook is to serve the clinician as an introduction to ethics, professionalism, and ethical decision making, and “to heighten ethical and professional responsibility, promote ethical conduct in dentistry, advance the dialogue on ethical issues, and stimulate further reflection on common ethical problems in dental practice.” (p. ii)

The American College of Dentists (ACD) is a nonprofit, professional organization that was founded in 1920 “to elevate the standards of dentistry, to encourage graduate study, and to grant Fellowship to those who have done meritorious work.” The mission of the ACD is to promote excellence, ethics, and professionalism in dentistry. The Ethics Committee of the ACD perceived a need for an ethics guide for the practicing dentist and in 1999 charged a committee to draft the “Ethics Handbook for Dentists.”

The drafting of the handbook took nine months and was completed in June 2000. A committee of experts and practitioners contributed to the draft and review process, including the five members of the ACD’s Ethics Committee. Dr. Stephen Ralls, the ACD’s Executive Director, carefully managed the review process and maintained the integrity of the project by his focused attention to collaboration, conciseness and consensus wherever possible among the reviewers. The Board of Regents adopted the handbook at the ACD’s Annual Meeting in 2000. The handbook is a project of the ACD Foundation and through that agency distributes the handbooks to dental schools and organizations on a complimentary basis (quantities may be limited).

There handbook - actually a 24-page booklet - has three parts. The first part is the professional ethics review that addresses thirteen common questions ranging from “what is meant by ethics?” and “”do we really have obligations to patients?” to “what about compromising quality?” and “can dentistry be both a business and a profession?” The second part addresses specific ethical issues for the clinician ranging from informed consent and confidentiality to advertising and access to care. Each response in the first two parts is a concise summative statement forged from the committee’s collective knowledge and experience in ethics, law and dental practice. The last part of the handbook addresses ethical decision making and describes decision principles and elements as well as four models or tests that a clinician may use as a guide when faced with an ethical problem.

There are only a few textbooks dedicated to the subject of dental ethics. The ADC Handbook could be used as a core reference for an ethics course in a dental school, continuing education program or dental study club reviewing ethical problems in practice, or as a source of reflection for the individual clinician.

Dentists face and deal with ethical problems in practice. The ACD’s Ethics Handbook for Dentists is intended to help the dentist by delineating values, obligations, and responsibilities of the professional life and by opening a dialogue about ethical problems in practice and ethical decision making: an ongoing dialogue that will be modified over time.

To obtain a copies (quantities may be limited) of the Ethics Handbook for Dentists, please contact:

Executive Office
American College of Dentists
839J Quince Orchard Blvd
Gaithersburg, MD 20878
Tel: +1 301-977-3223 / fax: +1 301-977-3330
E-mail at info@facd.org.

Contact Address of the Reviewer:

Thomas K. Hasegawa, Jr. D.D.S., M.A.
Associate Dean for Clinical Services
Baylor College of Dentistry
P.O. Box 660677
Dallas, TX 75266-0677
E mail: thasegawa@tambcd.edu