Ethical Dilemmas In Dentistry Essay

Dentistry is a very intriguing field that combines a professional health service with a business structure for compensation. All dentists are put into a position where there is a conflict of interests. This is due to the fact that they are in the position to gain financially from their professional recommendations. As a result, both the dentist and the patient are beneficiaries of the provided dental care. Within this structure, there can arise many ethical dilemmas. It is therefore the duty of the practicing dentist to be able to discern these situations and proceed in the most ethical way. As a prospective dentist, I am very aware of many of these situations, as I have grown up in a family where my father is a practicing dentist. I have seen first hand complexities of some of these situations. Abuse of prescriptions by patients, overtreatments, and informed consent for treatment are just a few examples of areas where ethical dilemmas can arise within the field of dentistry. Specifically, however, I want to look at a dilemma that is a daily moral situation faced by dentists and one that I will potentially face in the future when I become a dentist. The case is as follows:
A patient comes in to the office to get a temporary crown replaced with the permanent …show more content…
It is important to look at this situation through various philosophical ethical theories in order to make the correct moral decision on how to proceed. Based on the theories proposed by Kant, Mill, and Aristotle, if I were the dentist in this situation, I would choose to go with decision two and reschedule the patient to make sure the crown properly fits. In order to arrive at this conclusion, the predicament faced by the dentist was examined through deontological theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics as well as looking at the dental code of ethics proposed by the American Dental