INTRODUCTION

OF
BHBP 1
1. BACKGROUND

Dentist everywhere are members of a health profession

Dentistry has been a recognized profession for less than two centuries

PROFESSIONAL OBLIGATION

The dental profession serves the community

in both private and public practice settings
 2. Profession
The term “profession” has two distinct, although
closely related, meanings :
1. An occupation that is characterised by
dedication to the well-being of others, high
moral standards, a body knowledge and skills,
and a high level of autonomy, and
2. All the individual who practice that occupation
 The other definition of profession

A profession can be defined as a calling with a body

of specialized knowledge requiring intensive
academic preparation to qualify for admission, the
members of which act as a cohesive group in matters
affecting their relationship to the public they serve
 Webster’s dictionary defines a profession as “a
calling requiring specialized knowledge and often
long and intensive academic preparation” and
“the whole body of persons engaged in a
calling”.
 A profession is distinguished by the
following features :

1. An existing body of knowledge that is

constantly being expanded, updated, and
archieve in a literature record. The purpose is
constant improvement of the quality of the
profession’s service to individuals and to the
public

2. Academic preparation carried out in specialized

institutions.

3. The profession and its members accept a

lifelong commitment to continuing education
4. Society awards it the privilege of self-regulation,
which means determining the requirements for
entering and remaining in the profession, and
dealing with those members who do not meet
the requirement
5. Its members subscribe to a code of ethics
drawn up by the profession itself
6. The members form organized societies to
enhance the development of the group and its
societal mission, and to serve its individual
members
The characterize of profession are :

1. A substantial body of knowledge

2. A corollory of which is the obligation to keep
that knowledge up to date through continuing
education
3. Self regulation, a tradition whereby society
delegates to professional groups the legal
responsibility for determining who shall join
them in serving the public, and for disciplining
those members who do not meet the
profession’s requirements.
4. A code of ethic, guideliness for professional
conduct that are rooted in a moral imperative
rather than in law or regulation.
 3. What is a health profession ?

 Health profession as a calling in the health

sciences requiring specialized knowledge,
and one which meets the other criteria
listed
 4. PROFESSIONAL OBLIGATIONS

1) The chief client

2) The ideal relationship between dentist and patient
3) The central values of dental profession
4) Competence
5) Ideal relationship between co professionals
6) The relationship between dentistry and the larger
community
7) Integrity and education
 The Chief Client
Every profession has a chief client or clients. This
is the person or set of persons whose well being
the profession and its members are the chiefly
committed to serving

The patient in the chair is certainly one of a

dentist’s chief clients. But a dentist has
professional obligations to the patients in the
waiting room and beyond, and perhaps even to
the whole larger community, the public.
An Ideal Relationship between
Professional and Patient
The four models of an ideal relationship
between dentist and patient are :
1. The Guild Model
2. The Agent Model
3. The Commercial Model
4. The Interactive Model
 A Hierarchy of Central Values
Every profession is focused only on certain
aspects of the well being of its clients/

There is a certain value or set of value that

are the specific focus of this profession
and its particular expertise

These can be called the central values of

that profession
 There are six values that appear to be
accepted as the central values for dental
practice :
1.The patient’s life and general health
2. The patient’s oral health
3. The patient’s autonomy
4. The dentist’s preferred patterns of
practice
5. Esthetic values
6. Efficiency in the use of resources
 Competence
Every dentist is obligated both to acquire
and to maintain the expertise needed to
undertake his or her professional tasks,
and every dentist is obligated to undertake
only those tasks that are within his or her
competence
The Relative Priority of The Client’s
Well-Being

Commitment to service or commitment to

the public as one of the characteristic
features of a profession.
 Relations with co-professional
There are situations in which members of
different professions are caring for the
same patients.
 Relations between the
profession and the larger
community
The activities of every profession
involve relationships between both the
profession as a group and its members
and the larger community as a whole or
various significant subgroups of it.
One of the professional obligation is involving relationships
between profession and the larger community, so that to
serve community oral health is one of dentist obligation

To serve community oral health, dentist must understand the

basic concept of public health and dental public health