Legal and Ethical Issues In Dentistry

Contents

This online video-training programme is designed to encourage and help participants to see law and ethics in a different light. Far from being a boring subject confined to dusty textbooks in academic libraries, it is a dynamic and continually evolving topic that needs to adjust to the changes in society, in the profession and healthcare generally, and not least in dentistry itself. These changes present a wide range of fascinating and thought-provoking challenges and dilemmas for a busy dental team to wrestle with.

Drawing from situations that have arisen in real cases, and changes in the law relating to Consent and other areas, the programme is built around some practical examples of these challenges, and it suggests ways to steer a safe course through them.

Learning Objectives

As a result of completing this training programme, participants will:

• Understand the relationship between ethics, professionalism and the law
• Understand the duty of care, and how it applies to a variety of situations in dentistry including recent changes in UK law in relation to Consent.
• Understand the criteria by which the standard of care is judged – what the law expects, what the GDC expects, and the role of professional guidelines and standards documents
• Appreciate the potential complexity of some of the facets of professionalism, taking misleading (and deliberately misleading) conduct and honesty as an illustration of this.

This talk satisfies the GDC’s learning outcome:

• A – Effective communication with patients, the dental team, and others across dentistry, including when obtaining consent, dealing with complaints, and raising concerns when patients are at risk

Speaker

Dr Kevin Lewis BDS FDS RCS SFGDP(UK) LDS RCS, Dental Director, Dental Protection Limited (DPL)

Kevin Lewis qualified from The London Hospital in 1971.  He spent 20 years in full time general dental practice and 10 further years practising part time.  He became involved in the dento-legal field in 1989, firstly as a member of the Board of Directors of Dental Protection, then (1992) as a full time dento-legal adviser and since 1998 as Dental Director.  He became a member of the Council (Board of Directors) of the Medical Protection Society in 2003 and is a member of the senior management team of MPS. For 25 years from 1981 to 2006, Kevin was the Associate Editor of Dental Practice. He is now the Consultant Editor of Dentistry. He has written two textbooks on dental practice management. He writes and lectures regularly all over the world, including this year’s FDI World Dental Congress in Mexico this being his 8th FDI appearance since 1995.