Dental Law and Ethics PgCert

University of Bedfordshire

This flexible, part-time course provides a unique opportunity to study dental care from ethical, legal and professional perspectives. It builds your professional knowledge of the concepts and theories of law and ethics, and how they are applied in practice. Encompassing both clinical and business settings, it provides the opportunity to examine your own practice, particularly in relation to enhancing patient care and delivering excellent service.To take this course, you must have a relevant qualification in the field and be working in the profession. What will you study? Studying our Dental Law and Ethics PgCert course will equip you with the basic and fundamental concepts as well as the contemporary and practical applications of legal and ethical knowledge relevant to dental care and practice. Our Dental Law in Practice unit will introduce you to aspects of law related to dental care and practice while enabling you to adopt a critical, analytical and reflective approach. Moreover, you will develop an awareness of the risks associated with legal issues and learn how this can be managed in a dental team. With a similar approach, our unit in Ethical Dental Practice will develop your knowledge of ethical issues in the provision of high-quality dental care. Furthermore, you will explore these ethical dilemmas in more depth to understand how it impacts patient care.How will you be assessed?This course has been designed as a blended learning course combining face-to-face learning (during study contact days) with supported interactive on-line learning.In addition the course requires students to make explicit links between their learning on the course and their own individual practice. This is primarily through the assessment strategy and by allowing students the flexibility in selecting their topics for assessment tasks.Students also have the chance to reinforce their knowledge by linking the legal and ethical theory into their practice through developing an artefact that emerges from their chosen topics. Teaching learning and assessment activities across the course are designed to enable students to rehearse and hone skills required for their assessment tasks.For example working in groups to study reported cases in the media and legal and ethical cases from the GDC help students in their selection and later in their analysis of legal case law and their links to dental practice.The assessments for the course has been developed to ensure that:You are able to demonstrate achievement of course learning outcomes at masters’ levelThere is alignment to learning and teaching methodsAssessments are relevant to your workplace based practicesYou are supported to develop relevant workplace related skills operating in a legal and ethical frameworkCareersThis course is designed to develop the skills and practices of dental care professionals with an interest in legal and ethical dental practice. You can enhance your legal role in dental practice (such as practice managers or clinical leads); indemnity organisations; primary care organisations; or acting as an expert witness to legal firms.