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Editorial
Members of the dental profession are given permission by
the public to provide oral health care directly to them. The public trust is
truly a trust, a belief by the patient that they will get the finest service
available without the need for other professionals observing or monitoring
those procedures. It is not enough to be a knowledgeable, technically excellent
health care provider. Dentists serving the public must demonstrate their
commitment to and earn the right to be members of this Caring Profession.
And just where do they learn to be "caring professionals"?
Where do they get this foundation of integrity that serves as a guide
for their lifetime of practice? It is, perhaps, the most important lesson in
their professional education, one of those intangible's taught not by formal
lecture but by daily example. It should be instilled in them by their
role-model faculty during their undergraduate or graduate years.
Students will learn what they see, whether positive or negative.
If the faculty do not provide the proper example of the caring health-care
provider in the daily contact with students, the graduates, in general, will
leave the institution and consciously or subconsciously mimic those who taught
them to be professional dentists - not just diagnosis and treatment techniques,
but all of the facets that make up the composite of patient care. They will
practice what they observed, what they experienced during their years of
undergraduate or graduate education.
What do they take home with them when they see a faculty
person late and ill-prepared for lecture, leaving the clinical students alone
with their patients or canceling a scheduled clinic session altogether while
they attend to "more important matters" such as seeing private patients, tending
to a research project, or any of a myriad of distractions from the
responsibility at hand that directly tells the students by example that their
education and their patient's needs are subservient to the faculty's wishes of
the moment? Such actions clearly convey, "If you and your patient want my help,
you can wait until I'm good and ready". Not an example of the caring
professional.
Similarly, the quick look and check of a procedure without
taking the time to communicate with the patient and student, to demonstrate a
thoughtful, caring manner, to praise where praise is due, to tactfully discuss
possible ways of making it "just a little bit better", to instill patient
confidence in the student, to strengthen the student's confidence in himself or
herself and pride in what they are doing, sends the same message. It doesn't
take much effort to convey a sincere concern for the student's and patient's
needs or conversely, to undermine or destroy a student-patient or
student-faculty relationship. You cannot camouflage an indifferent attitude.
The teachers of dentistry, whether full-time or part-time,
must be enthusiastic, caring people, who do not carry their personal problems,
their outside activities or any others distractors into the teaching
environment with them that will readily convey to the students and patients
that they are not foremost in importance at that moment, and assures them that
they will get less than the instructor's undivided attention.
Such people commit themselves to an academic responsibility
where in reality, what they want is the title of "Professor" to help them get
on with their real mission in life, building a practice, and accumulating
worldly goods.
We cannot expect to educate young men and women to join
the profession of dentistry as complete caring, knowledgeable, skillful health
care providers if we permit their mentors to be anything less than role models
of similar stature.
Being exposed to Plato's four Cardinal Virtues: prudence,
fortitude, temperance and justice may not insure adoption by the observer any
more than being taught by a role model of integrity assures compliance. Such
qualified faculty are, however, a basic requirement.
We can only hope that the graduate will heed the Princeton
scholar, Charles Osgood's words, "May your lives be marked by an affectionate concern for
your fellow men."
James R. Jensen, DDS, MS
Professor Emeritus
School of Dentistry
University of Minnesota
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