Investigating the Level of Ethical Skills Among General Dentists in Yazd

Adherence to the principles of professional ethics, rules and regulations of the medical profession and patients' rights are prerequisites for providing dental care. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the level of ethical skills among Yazd general dental practitioners.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, general dentists practicing in Yazd during January 2020-2021 were randomly selected and completed a sixteen-item Chambers Ethical Skills Questionnaire which contains four domains of moral sensitivity, reasoning, integrity and courage. Data were subjected to statistical analysis using SPSS Version. 24 and analyzed using t-test, ANOVA and Tukey test. The significance level was 0. 05.

A total of 100 dentists, including 41 males and 59 females with a mean age of 35. 58±9. 19 Years, participated in this study. The mean score of dentists’ moral skills was 18. 06±4. 40 out of 32. The mean score of moral sensitivity, moral courage, moral integrity and moral reasoning were 5. 68±1. 61, 5. 30±1. 58, 3. 91±1. 59 and 3±1. 87, respectively out of 8 scores in each domain. There was no statistically significant relationship between the mean score of moral skills and its domains with age, sex, work experience and mother's education (P-value>0. 05). There was a statistically significant correlation between the mean score of moral courage and father’s (P=0.005) education and place of dental care (P =0.037).

Considering the average obtained scores of dentists' regarding ethical skills, the necessity of organizing educational courses with the topics of ethical skills, especially in the domain of moral reasoning and integrity is necessary