Profession-specific standards
Applying the Dental Council's Standards Framework to fees, consent, cosmetic care, disclosure and equity in Aotearoa
Oral health practitioners registered with the Dental Council: dentists, dental specialists, dental hygienists, dental therapists, oral health therapists, clinical dental technicians, dental technicians and orthodontic auxiliaries.
Structured learning and a written reflection to show insight after a complaint, an investigation or a responsible authority inquiry.
Focused learning on a core standard of practice, with a certificate and reflection for your portfolio.
This course applies ethics to the everyday realities of oral health practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. It works through the Dental Council's Standards Framework for Oral Health Practitioners, its five ethical principles, 28 professional standards and key practice standards, and shows how they combine with the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights and the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003. Topics include conflicts of interest in fee-for-service care, overtreatment and supervised neglect, honest estimates, informed consent in the dental chair, scope and working with dentists, advanced and cosmetic procedures, advertising, disclosure of complications, record integrity, boundaries, equity and cultural safety, blood borne viruses, colleague concerns, and how the HDC, the Dental Council and the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal respond.
It is written for dentists, dental specialists, dental hygienists, dental therapists, oral health therapists, clinical dental technicians, dental technicians and orthodontic auxiliaries registered with the Dental Council. It suits practitioners planning ethics-focused activities in their professional development plan, those preparing for a conversation with their professional peer, and those reflecting on a concern raised about their practice.
Oral health care in New Zealand has a distinctive ethical shape: mostly privately funded and often irreversible treatment, growing demand for elective and cosmetic work, marked inequities in oral health for Māori and other groups, and specific Council guidance such as offering extracted teeth to Māori patients. The course draws on published HDC and Tribunal decisions about dental care, uses realistic New Zealand case studies across the oral health professions, and ends with a scenario-based assessment and a structured reflective account.
11 sections · 29 lessons · 3 hours (estimated) · 20-question final assessment
Final assessment
20scenario-based questions
Certificate of completion
A certificate of completion for your learning portfolio.
The course includes a structured reflective account template: guided prompts to record what you learned, how you will apply it and how the change will show in your practice. It gives you written evidence of insight after a concern, and a ready record for your CPD portfolio.
Write it in your own words and leave out anything that could identify a patient, a colleague or a case. If you have an open complaint or case, talk to your adviser before reflecting on it in writing.
Everyone on the Dental Council's registers: general dentists and specialists, hygienists, dental therapists, oral health therapists, and both clinical and non-clinical dental technicians. Cases cover general and specialist practice, team-based care and working relationships with dentists, so each scope meets its own ethical pressures.
It looks at how fee-for-service payment can create conflicts of interest and teaches you to justify every plan by a recorded diagnosis and evidence. It distinguishes overtreatment, undertreatment and supervised neglect, and covers honest estimates, cost changes during treatment and advertising under the Council's Advertising practice standard.
Information on options, risks, costs and timing that meets Right 6 and the Council's Informed consent practice standard; written consent, competence and age rules for sedation, older people and young patients; and how to keep consent valid when a treatment plan changes part-way through a course of care.
Yes. It explains how HDC, the Dental Council, Professional Conduct Committees and the Tribunal handle concerns, and how to plan specific, evidenced remediation through your recertification programme with your professional peer. If conditions apply to you, check with the Council or your lawyer before enrolling.
The Council does not approve individual outside courses and sets no minimum hours, so no credit is claimed. Oral health practitioners may include it as a professional development activity where it links to your PDP, with the written reflection the course helps you produce. It is 3 hours (estimated) for NZ$139.
Every legal and regulatory point comes from primary sources: the HPCA Act 2003, the responsible authorities' standards and the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights. Anything we cannot confirm is left out.
Lessons, scenarios and assessment questions are written by us for each edition separately, then checked for accuracy, teaching quality and fair assessment before publication.
When a code, standard or law changes, the affected courses are reviewed and updated. Reported errors in legal or regulatory facts are corrected first.
Scopes, supervision and delegation, plus the Dental Council's IPC, medical emergencies and sedation standards, complaints and notifications.
Consent under the Code of Rights clause by clause: interpreters, written consent, refusal, competence, EPOAs and welfare guardians, young people and whānau.
Ethical reasoning for Aotearoa: a seven-step decision framework, the Code of Rights, Te Tiriti and cultural safety, conscientious objection and end-of-life law.
