Introduction.

Of the many dentists in Chile, just a few works at the public health sector. 80% of the population is assisted by it and constitute the percentage which presents an elevated caries index. An issue of social justice. On the other hand, the precarious labor conditions in the private sector put professionals in ethical dilemmas, and communication issues with the patients. These issues demand highest ethical standards. This research has the purpose of identifying if the clinical teaching is followed by adequate ethics education.

Materials and methods.

This was an exploratory, descriptive, cross-sectional study. Verifying the existence or not of ethics in the curricula, it identified the proportion between ethics and clinical competences in the learning objectives and programs' contents of the 4th and 5th years of schooling, among adults, children and in the surgery areas. All Chilean Dental Schools were invited to participate in the research.

Results.

Six Dental Schools participated. Four of them have a few ethical topics within their learning objectives or contents. The proportion goes from 3,8% to 12,5% at learning objectives and from 12,5 to 20% at subjects, without correlation with both parameters. Two do not contemplate ethic topics. One does not contemplate a course in ethics.

Conclusion.

There is a considerable gap between ethics and clinical teaching among the participant Dental Schools. Yet, ethics education promotes dental education at a high standard, as the population deserves. It is necessary to improve dental research in this critical field.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )