Decline of Ethics and the Rise of Cynicism in Dental School

Professional ethics and cynicism amongst Dutch dental students

“…The authors found that students' knowledge of ethics went downwards (instead of upwards) in the course of their 4 years in dental school. By their fourth year, only 18% of fourth-year students obtained 11 or more answers correct (2).…”

“…There is at least one study that suggests otherwise. In the late 1960s, Morris and Sherlock (2) examined the professionalism of dental students in three California dental schools. They presented 270 students with 21 scenarios containing ethical dilemmas.…”

“…Because professionalism has become an important topic in Dutch dental education and yet very little research has been undertaken about the attitudes of dental students in the Netherlands, the expectations of Dutch dental students regarding the professionalism of practicing dentists were examined. All freshmen and fifth-year dental students at one of the three Dutch dental schools were surveyed, using an instrument modelled on the one used by Morris and Sherlock (2). Consistent with Morris and Sherlock's original study, cynicism was defined narrowly as discordance between what students believe a dentist ought to do in a morally challenging situation and what they think practicing dentists will actually do.…”

Caring and curing revisited: student nurses' perceptions of nurses' and physicians' ethical stances

“…Part of the reason for their glori®cation of the nursing ethic may be due to idealism since many of these students were still less than half way through their degree programme. It is possible that had we questioned them latter we might have found less of an idealistic outlook, as other researchers have found with nursing, medical and dental students (Becker & Geer 1961, Psathas 1968, Morris & Sherlock 1971. We suggest also that these negative perceptions about physicians may be an attempt to counteract traditional medical hegemony for, as May and Fleming (1997) pointed out, discourse is related to (perceived) power relationships.…”

The Importance and Purpose of Medical Psychology in the Study of Medicine

“…It is sufficiently well known from the literature that the initially willing and open attitude towards patients gives way to a re signatory, cynical position as study contin ues [Gray et al, 1965;DeBrabander and Leon. 1968;Morris and Sherlock, 1971;Lippmann and Mohlen, 1974;Overbeck, 1984;Speicrer et al, 1984], Thus after a scries of medical disciplines have been 'aca demically conquered', one after the other in their apparent unrelation to each other, the student is confronted with medical psychol ogy. The didactic methods and contents of medico-psychological classes are often the opposite o f a student's previous experience of study.…”