Moral evaluation of radiological diagnostic error in stomatology

Abstract

The terms moral and ethical have been used to refer to the same concept: the set of principles and rules of conduct that regulate relations between men. The moral category designates a set of principles, norms, values and ideals that are part of both social and spiritual life, while ethics is the philosophical theory that explains and analyzes these phenomena. Professional ethics deals with the study and theoretical foundation of the essence and particularities of the development of professional morality in society. An integral part of ethics is medical ethics and its essence is the doctor-patient relationship, which will be determined, among other factors, by the personality traits of the subjects, by the levels of information and communication that they are established, by the depth granted in the analysis of the disease and the active response or not that the patient gives to the treatment; it also includes diagnostic error, professional secrecy and experimentation with human beings. Due to the implications of the diagnostic error and specifically in the radiological branch in the specialty of stomatology, we delve into its moral assessment, since the action of the health professional (stomatologist) in the application of this technique, calls for deep competition in the performance of their professional practice, so that a moral assessment of the diagnostic error and its expression in a particular branch is made: the Stomatology.