Professional Ethics, Jurisprudence, and Practice Management
What this domain tests
Items test consent, confidentiality and record keeping, the legal elements of negligence, professional boundaries and mandatory reporting, plus the business fundamentals of running a practice.
Ethics and law
- Valid consent requires capacity, adequate disclosure of material risks, alternatives and consequences, voluntariness, and documentation. Informed refusal is documented the same way.
- Minors need a parent or guardian unless emancipated or assessed as mature minor under local law.
- Negligence requires four elements: a duty of care, breach of that duty, causation and harm. All four must be proved; a bad outcome alone is not negligence.
- Vicarious liability makes an employer responsible for employees acting in the course of employment; personal professional accountability remains.
- Confidentiality can be breached only with consent, legal requirement or serious public risk. Records must be accurate, contemporaneous, legible and retained for the statutory period.
- Mandatory reporting covers suspected child or elder abuse and certain communicable and notifiable diseases. Never treat beyond your competence; refer.
- Advertising must be truthful and not misleading; fee-splitting and commissions to unregulated referrers are unethical.
Practice management
- Recall intervals are risk-based, not fixed. Monitor broken appointment rates, case acceptance, overhead as a percentage of revenue, and staff utilisation.
- Prescribing must follow legal requirements for controlled drugs, with secure storage and audit.
- Complaints should be acknowledged promptly, investigated openly and used to change systems; an apology is not an admission in most jurisdictions.
Worked example
A patient attends with a swelling that was reviewed twice without radiographs; a retained root is later found and the patient loses two teeth. Reasoning: duty existed once the patient was accepted for care. Breach is arguable because failure to image and investigate persistent swelling falls below the standard of a reasonable practitioner. Causation requires evidence that earlier diagnosis would probably have saved the teeth, and harm includes pain, additional treatment and cost. All four elements must hold; if the teeth were unsalvageable regardless, the claim fails on causation.
Traps
Assuming a signed form alone proves consent; calling any poor outcome negligence; discussing a patient's care in a public area or on social media; treating outside your scope instead of referring.