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Biomedical subjects

M J Bebeau

Publications and source records attributed to M J Bebeau.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Survey of ethical issues in dental research.

The American Association for Dental Research (AADR) surveyed its leaders to determine their perceptions of the prevalence of problematic research practices and the possible roles AADR should play in promoting scientific integrity. Seventy-six of the 98 program chairs and Association officers (1990-1995) surveyed responded. In general, these respondents did not think that serious misconduct or sloppy science occurred more often in AADR than in other scientific disciplines. Overall, respondents rated practices that undermine the trustworthiness of science (falsifying or fabrication of research data, retaliation, failure to present negative results, failure to disclose involvement with commercial enterprises, failure to maintain research records, etc.) as more serious, but less prevalent, than practices considered disrespectful of the work of others (gift authorship, citing sources without reading them, dividing a project into many small units, etc.). All respondents said that they had observed each of the less serious problematic practices one or more times, whereas 10% reported having observed retaliation, 30% reported having observed falsification, and 54% reported having observed plagiarism one or more times. AADR leaders had observed many more instances of misconduct and other problematic research practices than had faculty surveyed by Swazey et al. (1993), supporting conclusions by Greenberg and Goldberg (1994) that status and years of experience are associated with more frequent observations of misconduct. With respect to the possible roles the AADR might play in promoting research integrity, 88% thought that AADR should develop ethics cases and materials for educational use, 78% thought that AADR should create a process for addressing allegations of misconduct, 72% thought that the Association should develop an ethics committee or consultation service, 55% thought it should create a yearly ethics symposium, and 45% thought that the AADR should develop a more specific code of ethics to complement the general code recently developed by the IADR.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMed1994

Ethical and legal issues in special patient care.

Dental professionals encounter a number of challenging ethical and legal dilemmas when caring for special patients. Questions may arise in securing consent for treatment; using restraints; overcoming economic, social, and physical barriers to care; and dealing with patient abuse. These concerns generally stem from underlying conflicts between any of the fundamental ethical principles of autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, veracity, and fidelity. When securing consent for treatment, practitioners must consider both legal competence and decision-making capacity. If decision-making is impaired, input should be solicited from others to arrive at treatment decisions in keeping with the patient's values concerning dental care. To guard against the inappropriate use of restraints, 10 guidelines are presented for consideration. Providers should strive not to allow economic considerations to influence their care unduly either by failing to offer a full range of options or by providing care that is below usual standards. Services must be made available to disabled individuals on the same basis that they are available to others without disability. This principle forms the basis of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which stipulates what accommodations must be made to ensure that physical and social barriers do not impede access to dental care. Finally, special patients, particularly the frail elderly, are at increased risk to become victims of abuse. Dental professionals should be familiar with the warning signs and symptoms of such abuse and their obligation to take actions to end it.

Advance Directives↗
PubMed1994

The impact of a dental ethics curriculum on moral reasoning.

This study explored the effects of problem-oriented dental ethics curriculum, consisting of 39 contact hours distributed over four years on moral reasoning development and on attitudes about the value of instruction. Students (n = 720) in the classes of 1985 through 1992 participated in the required curriculum and completed, as freshman and seniors, the Defining Issues Test (DIT), a well-validated test of moral reasoning. In addition, students responded to open-ended questions about the value of ethics instruction. Cross-sectional comparison of the eight classes of entering freshman with two classes of third quarter juniors (n = 265) who completed the DIT prior to implementing the ethic curriculum indicated that the dental curriculum offered prior to 1981 had little influence on moral reasoning. Pre- to posttest DIT comparisons for seven of the eight classes of instructed students indicated statistically significant improvement. Comparison of the effect sizes (Cohen's d) of our intervention with the average effect size reported in a meta analysis of effective interventions indicates that results cannot be attributed to student maturation alone. Analysis of individual change patterns suggest that the success occurred despite a higher than average (17 percent vs. 6 percent) number of students who showed regression from pre- to posttest. Substantive explanations (gender, motivation, regression to the mean) did not appear to account for the change patterns, but theoretical explanations, based on observations in other settings, offer insights for further research and curriculum development. In conclusion, the results indicate that students not only benefit from ethics instruction, but value it.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

The validity and reliability of a clinical performance rating scale.

Rating scales are standard tools for evaluating clinical performance in medicine; however, in dentistry they appear to be used solely to evaluate technical skills. A pretest of three performance scales did not reveal the superiority of any one scale, though faculty clearly preferred a 20-item, six-point Likert scale that rated personal, interpersonal, and professional qualities. Directors and co-directors of six group clinics subsequently rated performance of two classes of seniors and one class of juniors. Interrater reliabilities, ranging from .62 to .83 across rater pairs, were superior to reliabilities reported in medical education studies. Although technique grades, preclinical GPA, and performance ratings differentiated students who completed clinical requirements on time (n = 302) from those who did not (n = 83), performance ratings added information about competence that was not reflected in GPA and technique grades. The usefulness of a rating scale appears to be in its potential for giving students feedback and for evaluating program effectiveness.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1985

Measuring dental students' ethical sensitivity.

This paper describes the development of stimulus materials and scoring procedures to measure an individual's ability to recognize the ethical issues often hidden within the dentist's professional problems. The importance of this ability is discussed as it relates to other abilities thought to be necessary conditions for ethical or moral behavior. Dental students completed the ethical sensitivity test and Rest's test of moral reasoning. The sensitivity test requires transcribing verbal responses to audio dramas, a technique that: (1) elicits sufficient data for making inferences about ethical sensitivity, (2) produces good interjudge agreement and interrater reliability, and (3) measures variability in student performance. Data indicate high internal consistency compared with previous efforts to measure components of sensitivity (e.g., empathy), acceptable test-retest reliability for a subsample. and the distinctiveness of sensitivity and reasoning scores. The results have broad application for the teaching of ethics and suggest new directions for the study of professional socialization.

Dentist-Patient Relations↗
PubMed1985

Teaching ethics in dentistry.

This paper describes a curriculum project designed to help dental students identify, reason about, and adequately resolve ethical problems in their chosen profession. The project involved application of a theoretical approach to the study of ethical development that had not been applied previously in professional education. Tests were designed to measure the abilities defined by the theory and used to evaluate the program and to monitor student progress. To date, studies of student abilities and attitudes clearly indicate that the curriculum is needed. Learning activities, created to promote the abilities, are based on studies of the real-life ethical problems confronting dentists and dental students. A program of research and development has been established to study the influence of this curriculum on the abilities defined, and to link them to clinical performance. Half of the dental schools in the United States have requested these materials. Suggestions are made to professional schools considering expanding the teaching of ethics.

Achievement↗
PubMed1984

Masculine and feminine personality attributes of dental students and their attitudes toward women's roles in society.

Egalitarian attitudes and the personality traits of instrumentality (masculinity) and expressiveness (femininity) were examined for 314 male and 71 female dental students. Women dental students hold far more egalitarian views toward women's roles than a norm group of women college students, who are somewhat more liberal than male dental students. Female dental students are also more instrumental than college women, though somewhat less instrumental than male dental students. Male and female dental students did not differ on expressiveness, though both were less expressive than college women. A comparison of dental students with academic psychologists suggests that successful professionals have similar personality traits regardless of gender.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The development of a professional role orientation inventory.

This paper describes the development and testing of the Professional Role Orientation Inventory, a 40-item Likert-type instrument designed to assess a dentist's perception of his or her professional role. The test includes four 10-item scales representing four attitudinal dimensions: Authority, Responsibility, Agency, and Autonomy. The study describes differences between and among groups of professionals and dental students who took the test. Responses to the various scales suggest that practitioners do have different conceptualizations of their professional role, though these conceptions vary somewhat from the various models of professionalism described in the literature.

Decision Making↗