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ADEA Annual Session

American Dental Education Association Annual Meeting

March 17-21, 2012
Orlando, Florida

Omicron Kappa Upsilon/Sigma Phi Alpha Joint Symposium

ADEA Annual Session and Exhibition 2012

Saturday, March 17, 2012 from 2:00-3:30PM

Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek

Orlando, Florida

A Mere State of Mind

Charles N. Bertolami, DDS, DMedSc

New York University College of Dentistry, New York, NY

Professional school is often the last-chance stop for inspiring students with a deeply felt sense of higher intention. However, the dental school experience seldom achieves this objective. Rather, an intangible and hidden curriculum often moves students in precisely the opposite direction—toward a lifelong sense of self-interest The impact of our formal ethics courses seems marginal at best and irrelevant at worst. Students take the ethics courses we offer and pass the tests we give but no one’s behavior seems to change as a result. Dental school establishes a certain state of mind not easily reversed. Citing theologian Cornelius Plantinga, “a mere state of mind can swell to become an entire destiny.” Part of the reason may be that we teach about ethics as opposed to actually teaching ethics—and teaching it with a realistic expectation of behavioral change. Underlying this outcome might be the erroneous assumption that high intellect (a key criterion for admissions to professional or graduate school) somehow translates into ethical behavior. This presumption takes for granted buy-in by students into a shared set of ethical norms that they may not really accept and that our curricula do not reinforce. The result is that ethics instruction is initiated several steps beyond where students find themselves in terms of their own ethical formation. Much ends up being unsaid and unexplored. The premise of this presentation is that our ethics courses are inadequate in both content and form to the extent that they do not cultivate an introspective orientation to professional life—a state of mind that gels in dental school and persists over decades as a personal and tragic destiny. Traditional approaches to other kinds of coursework may be singularly ineffective when it comes to teaching ethics. Reading assignments, lectures, group discussions, and case studies, followed by examination are not enough. Intelligent students easily pick up on what they are supposed to believe, but the approach does little to reveal what students do believe, let alone alter their belief structures in compelling ways. Fewer assumptions about a diverse student body’s antecedent ethical formation might be a good place to start, beginning with basics; inculcating a sense of ethics as a more generalized element of personal wellbeing—physical, mental, spiritual, and particularly social. Doing so requires ways of inspiring, captivating, and exciting students by formulating personal development schema. Peer evaluative approaches may be the single most robust way of doing so.

Brief Biographic Sketch:

D.D.S., The Ohio State University (1974); D.Med.Sc., Harvard (1979); residency in oral and maxillofacial surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital (1980). Teaching posts at the University of Connecticut (1980-1983); Harvard (1983-1989); Chair of oral and maxillofacial surgery, UCLA (1989-1995); Dean, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Dentistry (1995-2007); Dean, New York University College of Dentistry (2007-present).

President of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR)(2002-03). President of the American Dental Education Association (ADEA)(2008-09). Named honorary fellow, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (2009); recipient of the Distinguished Service Award of the American Dental Association (2010).

Previous research and scholarly interests: orofacial tissue repair; biochemistry of hyaluronic acid; use of sodium hyaluronate in treatment of temporomandibular disorders. Current scholarly interests: Dental education and professional ethics.

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