Law & Ethics

In our time most service related businesses have some collection of ethical principles regarding their customers or fellow employees. For example, in a large hardware store where I used to work, we were taught to “walk an extra mile” for our customers in assistance with their shopping needs. We also had some specifically designated classes clarifying particular situations among colleagues at the workplace. This training was definitely helping employees coming from a variety of backgrounds to understand the importance of ethical essentials at work.

If one would try to compare the healthcare industry with the rest of the service related fields, they could see that the aforementioned has to rely on ethical standards at a much more advanced level. The healthcare industry, which the dental field is part of, deals with patients unlike the rest of businesses. Dentists and their teams have an access to patients’ private information like health records, financial profiles, social security numbers and more.

This adds a new level of ethical standards, which in conjunction with ethical principals in a dental office and how dental practices and services are promoted, forms a written code of ethics. Code of Ethics is widely accepted among members of the American Dental Association, a professional organization for dentists. The American Dental Assistant Association also has a written code of ethics for dental assistants, a listing of high ethical standards which members of the organization agree to obey.

2

Ethical issues, unlike legal ones, can be subject to individual interpretation and thus can create some grey areas, in which a dental assistant should follow their best judgment. For instance, there are a few people you will not be able to educate or convince in the importance of dental care. Because of something in their background or...