Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

M J Bebeau

Publications and source records attributed to M J Bebeau.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

The good practitioner: the story of Brent L. Benkelman.

Dr Brent Benkelman has practiced oral surgery in Manhattan, Kansas, since 1971. Having grown up in a tiny farming town in western Kansas, he opted for the lifestyle of a smaller community after graduating from the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Dentistry in 1966 and completing his training in oral and maxillofacial surgery in 1969. His experiences since then have revolved around family, practice, and community. With his family as his first priority, he has participated in various community activities, including a church-operated food pantry, an emergency shelter for the homeless, and Habitat for Humanity. He was nominated as a moral exemplar in dentistry for his dedicated commitment to his patients and because he understands and cares about the complexities of his patients as human beings, placing his own financial gain secondary to the interests of his patients.

History, 20th Century↗
PubMed2001

Does this integrated law and ethics curriculum promote ethical thinking?

In an invited response, the Detroit Mercy, School of Dentistry combined ethics and law four-year curriculum is analyzed. Previous models combining law and ethics have shown more success in the former than the latter. Additional concerns include the lack of an explicit measure of ethical outcomes such as moral reasoning and the assumption that ethical activities engaged in by novices such as the White Coat Ceremony and early written assignments demonstrate competence.

Curriculum↗
PubMed2001

Moral leadership in academic dentistry: the story of Jeanne Craig Sinkford.

Jeanne Craig Sinkford graduated from Howard University College of Dentistry in 1958 and there began a career in academic dentistry as a clinical instructor. Six years later, armed with specialty training in prosthodontics and a master's degree and PhD in physiology from Northwestern University, Dr Sinkford returned to Howard expecting to develop a research program and continue her clinical teaching. Instead, she was immediately made head of the Department of Prosthodontics and in 11 more years became Howard's dean of dentistry. After 16 years as dean, Dr Sinkford retired and took a position at the American Dental Education Association charged with developing and implementing policy on issues involving gender and minorities in dentistry. In addition to her reputation for her principled approach to getting things done, Dr Sinkford is widely recognized for her dedicated sincerity, her warmth, her concern for others, and her "reasoned reasonableness."

Education, Dental↗
PubMed2000

Commitment to community service: the story of Dr. Jack Echternacht.

Using the criteria developed by Colby and Damon, the authors identified Dr. Jack Echternacht as a moral hero. This paper describes his thirty-year fight to fluoridate the drinking water of Brainerd, Minnesota. Family influences on his character are also presented.

Fluoridation↗
PubMed2000

John E. Echternacht: practitioner and community leader.

For Minnesota dentists with long memories, Dr Jack Echternacht is a legendary figure. He graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry in 1943. Except for a 3-year enlistment in the Navy during World War II, he has made his home and his professional life in Brainerd, on the edge of Minnesota's lake country. A few years after he started his general practice, reports began to appear about the striking reduction of dental caries in children's teeth when fluoride was placed in the drinking water. Excited by these prospects for better oral health, Dr Echternacht led a Chamber of Commerce initiative in 1954 to introduce fluoride into Brainerd's water supply. What seemed at first an easy victory turned into a 30-year struggle. Dr Echternacht's determination, persistence, and leadership during this fight for fluoridation led to his selection as a moral model in dentistry.

Dental Caries↗
PubMed1996

Survey of ethical issues in dental research.

The American Association for Dental Research (AADR) surveyed its leaders to determine their perceptions of the prevalence of problematic research practices and the possible roles AADR should play in promoting scientific integrity. Seventy-six of the 98 program chairs and Association officers (1990-1995) surveyed responded. In general, these respondents did not think that serious misconduct or sloppy science occurred more often in AADR than in other scientific disciplines. Overall, respondents rated practices that undermine the trustworthiness of science (falsifying or fabrication of research data, retaliation, failure to present negative results, failure to disclose involvement with commercial enterprises, failure to maintain research records, etc.) as more serious, but less prevalent, than practices considered disrespectful of the work of others (gift authorship, citing sources without reading them, dividing a project into many small units, etc.). All respondents said that they had observed each of the less serious problematic practices one or more times, whereas 10% reported having observed retaliation, 30% reported having observed falsification, and 54% reported having observed plagiarism one or more times. AADR leaders had observed many more instances of misconduct and other problematic research practices than had faculty surveyed by Swazey et al. (1993), supporting conclusions by Greenberg and Goldberg (1994) that status and years of experience are associated with more frequent observations of misconduct. With respect to the possible roles the AADR might play in promoting research integrity, 88% thought that AADR should develop ethics cases and materials for educational use, 78% thought that AADR should create a process for addressing allegations of misconduct, 72% thought that the Association should develop an ethics committee or consultation service, 55% thought it should create a yearly ethics symposium, and 45% thought that the AADR should develop a more specific code of ethics to complement the general code recently developed by the IADR.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMed1994

Ethical and legal issues in special patient care.

Dental professionals encounter a number of challenging ethical and legal dilemmas when caring for special patients. Questions may arise in securing consent for treatment; using restraints; overcoming economic, social, and physical barriers to care; and dealing with patient abuse. These concerns generally stem from underlying conflicts between any of the fundamental ethical principles of autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, veracity, and fidelity. When securing consent for treatment, practitioners must consider both legal competence and decision-making capacity. If decision-making is impaired, input should be solicited from others to arrive at treatment decisions in keeping with the patient's values concerning dental care. To guard against the inappropriate use of restraints, 10 guidelines are presented for consideration. Providers should strive not to allow economic considerations to influence their care unduly either by failing to offer a full range of options or by providing care that is below usual standards. Services must be made available to disabled individuals on the same basis that they are available to others without disability. This principle forms the basis of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which stipulates what accommodations must be made to ensure that physical and social barriers do not impede access to dental care. Finally, special patients, particularly the frail elderly, are at increased risk to become victims of abuse. Dental professionals should be familiar with the warning signs and symptoms of such abuse and their obligation to take actions to end it.

Advance Directives↗
PubMed1994

The impact of a dental ethics curriculum on moral reasoning.

This study explored the effects of problem-oriented dental ethics curriculum, consisting of 39 contact hours distributed over four years on moral reasoning development and on attitudes about the value of instruction. Students (n = 720) in the classes of 1985 through 1992 participated in the required curriculum and completed, as freshman and seniors, the Defining Issues Test (DIT), a well-validated test of moral reasoning. In addition, students responded to open-ended questions about the value of ethics instruction. Cross-sectional comparison of the eight classes of entering freshman with two classes of third quarter juniors (n = 265) who completed the DIT prior to implementing the ethic curriculum indicated that the dental curriculum offered prior to 1981 had little influence on moral reasoning. Pre- to posttest DIT comparisons for seven of the eight classes of instructed students indicated statistically significant improvement. Comparison of the effect sizes (Cohen's d) of our intervention with the average effect size reported in a meta analysis of effective interventions indicates that results cannot be attributed to student maturation alone. Analysis of individual change patterns suggest that the success occurred despite a higher than average (17 percent vs. 6 percent) number of students who showed regression from pre- to posttest. Substantive explanations (gender, motivation, regression to the mean) did not appear to account for the change patterns, but theoretical explanations, based on observations in other settings, offer insights for further research and curriculum development. In conclusion, the results indicate that students not only benefit from ethics instruction, but value it.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

The validity and reliability of a clinical performance rating scale.

Rating scales are standard tools for evaluating clinical performance in medicine; however, in dentistry they appear to be used solely to evaluate technical skills. A pretest of three performance scales did not reveal the superiority of any one scale, though faculty clearly preferred a 20-item, six-point Likert scale that rated personal, interpersonal, and professional qualities. Directors and co-directors of six group clinics subsequently rated performance of two classes of seniors and one class of juniors. Interrater reliabilities, ranging from .62 to .83 across rater pairs, were superior to reliabilities reported in medical education studies. Although technique grades, preclinical GPA, and performance ratings differentiated students who completed clinical requirements on time (n = 302) from those who did not (n = 83), performance ratings added information about competence that was not reflected in GPA and technique grades. The usefulness of a rating scale appears to be in its potential for giving students feedback and for evaluating program effectiveness.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed1985

Measuring dental students' ethical sensitivity.

This paper describes the development of stimulus materials and scoring procedures to measure an individual's ability to recognize the ethical issues often hidden within the dentist's professional problems. The importance of this ability is discussed as it relates to other abilities thought to be necessary conditions for ethical or moral behavior. Dental students completed the ethical sensitivity test and Rest's test of moral reasoning. The sensitivity test requires transcribing verbal responses to audio dramas, a technique that: (1) elicits sufficient data for making inferences about ethical sensitivity, (2) produces good interjudge agreement and interrater reliability, and (3) measures variability in student performance. Data indicate high internal consistency compared with previous efforts to measure components of sensitivity (e.g., empathy), acceptable test-retest reliability for a subsample. and the distinctiveness of sensitivity and reasoning scores. The results have broad application for the teaching of ethics and suggest new directions for the study of professional socialization.

Dentist-Patient Relations↗
PubMed1985

Teaching ethics in dentistry.

This paper describes a curriculum project designed to help dental students identify, reason about, and adequately resolve ethical problems in their chosen profession. The project involved application of a theoretical approach to the study of ethical development that had not been applied previously in professional education. Tests were designed to measure the abilities defined by the theory and used to evaluate the program and to monitor student progress. To date, studies of student abilities and attitudes clearly indicate that the curriculum is needed. Learning activities, created to promote the abilities, are based on studies of the real-life ethical problems confronting dentists and dental students. A program of research and development has been established to study the influence of this curriculum on the abilities defined, and to link them to clinical performance. Half of the dental schools in the United States have requested these materials. Suggestions are made to professional schools considering expanding the teaching of ethics.

Achievement↗