Code of Ethics and Professionalism

Board takeaway

Protect the child’s welfare while honoring duties to the family, dental team, colleagues, and care system.

Use the code’s six principles to explain why the proposed action is responsible:

Trust · Integrity · Connection · Justice · Well-being · Safety

Who the code serves

• Includes infants, children, adolescents, and people with special health care needs.
• Consider both the individual patient and the professional relationships that make care possible.

Six principles

• Trust: Communicate honestly, ground practice in scientific evidence, and keep learning throughout professional life.
• Integrity: Fulfill professional duties, maintain competence, and participate in the profession’s oversight of itself.
• Connection: Build an inclusive professional community through collegial relationships, mentoring, and cooperation.
• Justice: Show respect and empathy; approach social and cultural differences with humility; support the best attainable oral health for every child.
• Well-being: Advocate for children, families, and pediatric oral health professionals.
• Safety: Make care quality and patient/team safety priorities; reduce potential harm.

Navigation for a specific ethical dilemma

• Apply the principles to the actual conflict: what the child needs, who has decision authority, how alternatives affect the family and team, and whether the clinician can provide the proposed care competently and safely.
• This is a study framework for applying the code.

For specific professional duties, review Ethical responsibilities. The code also points to dental and pediatric professional ethics guidance.

Common board traps

Answer aloud

What anchors an ethical pediatric dental decision?

Protect the child's welfare while honoring duties to families, the dental team, colleagues, and the care system.

• Apply the principles to the actual conflict and explain how the proposed action meets them.
• The companion ethical-responsibilities policy supplies more specific duties.

Does an employer's financial preference remove the dentist's ethical responsibility?

No. Maintain competent, evidence-based, safe care and your own responsibility for the clinical decision.

• Consider patient/family needs and team safety alongside professional duties.
• Use the ethical-responsibilities policy to address undue third-party influence, consent, referral, and second opinions.