Abstract
Most current dental ethics curricula use a deontological approach to biomedical
and dental ethics that emphasizes adherence to duties and principles as properties
that determine whether an act is ethical. But the actual ethical orientation of students is
typically unknown. The purpose of the current study was to determine the ethical
orientation of dental students in resolving clinical ethical dilemmas. First-year students
from one school were invited to participate in an electronic survey that included eight
vignettes featuring ethical conflicts common to the health care setting. The
Multidimensional Ethics Scale was used to evaluate the students’ ethical judgments
of these conflicts. Students rated each vignette along 13 ethically relevant items using a
7-point scale. Nine of the thirteen items were analyzed because they represent the
dominant ethical theories, including deontology. One hundred sixteen dental students
successfully completed the survey. Of the analyzed items, those associated with
deontology had comparatively weak associations with whether students judged the
action to be ethical and whether students judged themselves likely to perform the
action. Whether an action was judged to be caring had the strongest association with
whether the action was judged to be ethical and whether students judged themselves
likely to perform the action. These results suggest that adherence to duties or principles
has weaker association with students’ ethical judgments and behavior compared to
caring, which was found to be more influential in their ethical judgments and behavior.
Current dental school curricula with a primary focus on deontology may no