Lexical analysis of the Code of Dental Ethics

Abstract

Introduction

The Code of Dental Ethics (CDE), Resolution CFO-118 of May 2012, is a document that advocates the ethical performance of professionals registered in the Federal Council of Dentistry with the intention of orientation, reflection and standardization of professional practice.

Objective

To analyze the content of the current CEO in order to identify relevant aspects addressed in this document.

Material and method

A documentary research, descriptive of the 2012 CDE was carried out. The textual contents of the articles, paragraphs and subsections of CFO-118/2012 Resolution were processed by the IRAMUTEQ software and analyzed by Descending Hierarchical Classification (CHD), Similitude Analysis and Word Cloud.

Result

In the quanti-qualitative analysis of the textual corpus, 5,340 word were observed, with a mean of 89.0 words per CEO article. Of the total, 1,417 distinct words were found and 1,073 of these, which presented an average of more than 3.1 occurrences per article, were included by the software in CHD. This classification resulted in six classes: “Health Team”, “Professional-Patient Relationship”, “Fences”, “Advertising and Marketing”, “Normative Set” and “Services”, the latter being the most prevalent (20, 1%), and characterized by the words: treatment (χ2 = 35.6), cost (χ2 = 16.5) and work (χ2 = 16.1). From the six classes, three major branches were identified: professional (29.2%), care (39.3%) and advertising and marketing (31.5%).

Conclusion

The lexical analysis demonstrated the valorization of the service rendering, the prioritization of the profession care sector and the virtues related to the professional according to analysis of the CDE of 2012.

Descriptors:
Qualitative analysis; codes of ethics; ethics dental