The case of the pregnant adolescent.

In this case an adolescent, minor female presents herself for routine dental care, but is pregnant without parental knowledge. She asks the dentist not to reveal the pregnancy to her parents. Three experts including one attorney, one dental educator with 25 years of private practice experience, and one member of a state psychological association's ethics committee comment on the difficult ethical and legal issues found in this actual case.

The role of dentists in dentistry.

The extent to which dentists influence the outcomes of dental care, compared to the effects of dental technology or patient variation, has not been well studied. A review of the literature on the personality and value structures of dentists and dental students reveals general trends involving preferences of concrete, utilitarian, unambiguous, and conventional situations that are classified and judged in terms of their potential for dentists' power and control and for relationships of helping others but avoiding mutual dependency. These findings are summarized in a hypothesis that dentists seek situations where they can exercise control and establish paternalistic relationships with others.

Reflection, introspection, and communication: a psychologist's view of dental ethics.

A psychologist with experience teaching ethics in dentistry observes that ethical practice involves three skills: reflection (to understand the ethical issue), introspection (to discover the forces for action), and communication (to carry ethics into action). Several short cases are presented showing how ethical communication can be difficult. Direct communication (what psychologist call confrontation) is recommended and some tips are offered.

Toward a competency analysis of operative dentistry technique skills.

This research seeks ways to distinguish beginners from competent students based on the manner in which they perform. Five "beginner" students who had passed preclinical operative dentistry technique and six "competent" students one month prior to graduation were videotaped performing an occlusal amalgam preparation on #19 on a typodont. The tapes were scored for time in cutting the preparation and observing it and for "unproductive work" (nonfluencies).

Analyzing the sources of unreliability in fixed prosthodontics mock board examinations.

Mock board examinations in fixed prosthodontics were submitted to generalizability analysis in order to determine which sources of unwanted variance of measurement contribute to grade decisions and whether this lack of reliability is of practical significance. Students completed approximately three fixed prosthodontics test cases during their final year of clinic, and each case was scored by two faculty members. Of the subsamples of students where two test cases (trials) per student were graded by the same two raters, the subsamples with the highest and the lowest inter-rater reliability coefficients were chosen.