Ethics and Law for the Dental Team
by Mark Brennan, Richard Oliver, Bryan Harvey and Gill Jones
PasTest Publisher 2006

This book was designed for all dental professionals as a practical guide by a group of United Kingdom (UK) based dentists. The goal was to provide guidelines on how to practice dentistry in an ethical way by understanding and applying ethical and legal principles using cases and scenarios. The authors address students, faculty and practicing professionals in a team-working approach which reads well and ably meets their intent.

The volume is organized into 10 chapters. Chapter 2 presents an interesting mnemonic to describe an approach for studying ethics and professionalism. The word "professional" is presented with each letter a verb for a suggested action such as p for practice, r for read and o for observe, ending with l for learn. It is a clever and hopefully memorable way to stimulate learning and discussion. The same approach is applied in Chapter 3 with the use of the mnemonic "patient" for how to teach ethics and law. The role and responsibility of the General Dental Council (GDC) in the UK is woven through out the book so terminology and examples have a definite British flavor. The GDC is the administrative body that registers dental professionals, set standards and assures the quality of dental education.

Several chapters use practical cases and questions to examine how ethical principles and legal statutes would apply.  The cases address issues such as treating a minor, whistle blowing on a colleague and infection control lapses. The chapter on teamworking examines scope of practice, negligence, practitioner arrogance and staff with personnel problems. The last chapter provides UK web resources, suggested readings and professional organizations for the reader’s reference. Dr. Brennan and colleagues have provided the profession with a well-done and usable addition to the literature.