[Music] this video is sponsored by bootcamp.com check it out for iron bde prep and use coupon code mental dental for 10 off hey everyone dr ryan here and welcome to my series on ethics i wanted to make this series for a few reasons first of all there are so many questions on the board exam regarding ethical dilemmas and principles but secondly ethics is kind of interesting because it's so different from what we usually talk about the dentistry we learn for standardized exams is typically very precise we're talking about 0.2 millimeters inside the dej for a cavity preparation or 0.7 parts per million of fluoride in tap water but ethics can be a little bit gray and it requires a different type of thinking so this first introductory video is designed to give you some background about how to think about ethics and what the ada code of ethics is all about so the dental profession holds a special position of trust within society and i'm gonna hone in on that word trust for example a patient comes to you with limited to no dental background and is essentially giving you permission to work inside their mouth and cause some discomfort and they're trusting that you know what you're doing and have their best interests in mind as a consequence of that society affords the dental profession certain privileges that are not available to members of the public like being able to work in someone's mouth and in return the profession makes a commitment to society that its members will adhere to high ethical standards of conduct and following that code of ethics will earn trust from society and so the cycle continues now these high ethical standards are embodied in what's called the ada code which is a written expression of that trust privilege ethics contract that we discussed in the previous slide between the dental profession and society and members of the ada that's the american dental association voluntarily agree to abide by this code as a condition of their membership but all dentists should follow the standards presented in this code in order to be ethical practitioners the code is an evolving document that undergoes continuous review and due to its finite nature it can't possibly cover every single ethical dilemma that comes up in other words it's not a complete articulation of all ethical obligations but it tries to cover the vast majority of dilemmas that might come up in daily practice so there are three main components of the ada code the first ones are the principles of ethics and we're going to use the shorthand pe for the rest of the series when we're talking about a principle of ethics these are the aspirational goals of the profession they provide guidance and offer justification for the following two components there are five fundamental principles that form the foundation of the ada code and those are patient autonomy non-maleficence beneficence justice and veracity and these principles are the firm guideposts of the profession and each one will get its own video but they can overlap with each other and compete with one another for priority meaning sometimes you have to weigh two of these principles against one another in a given ethical dilemma and we'll go through examples of that later on in the series next is the code of professional conduct and we'll use the shorthand c p c to discuss and describe the code of professional conduct in the rest of the video series and this is an expression of specific types of conduct that are either required or prohibited it's a product of the ada's legislative system which means it's legally binding on members of the ada and violations of this code may result in disciplinary action and lastly we have the advisory opinions and we'll use the shorthand ao to describe these in future videos and so these opinions are interpretations that apply the code of professional conduct to specific situations they're meant to provide guidance to ada members on how the ada council might interpret the code of professional conduct in a disciplinary proceeding so again all three of these together make up the ada code and lastly since i brought up the idea of legislation and legally binding i want to talk about the difference between ethics and law because even though they're closely related they are not the same so my definitions for these terms are as follows ethics means you do the right thing because you're obligated to do what's morally right while laws say you do the right thing or else you'll be punished essentially laws enforce the behaviors we're expected to follow while ethics suggest what we ought to follow in the first place so the question you might be asking is which one's more important ethics or laws and this question has been the subject of many debates but let me simplify it for you ethics generally function at a higher level than laws do since laws simply enforce what ethics already tell us also laws can change from time to time and from society to society for that matter whereas ethics arguably do not so for those reasons we're going to say that ethics trump laws and with that in mind the ada calls upon dentists to not only possess knowledge and technical skill which is a lot of what we cover on mental dental but also good character qualities of honesty integrity and respect which define the true professional so that's it for this introductory video i hope you found it interesting and i hope you're as excited as i am to dive into the world of ethics that's it for this video thank you so much for watching please like this video if you enjoyed it and subscribe to this channel for much more on dentistry if you'd like to support me please check out my patreon page and thank you to all of my patrons for their support you can unlock access to my video slides to take notes on and practice questions for the board exams so go check that out the link is in the description thanks again for watching everyone i'll see you in the next video [Music] you