Professors and professionals: higher education's role in developing ethical dentists.

Both higher education and the dental profession must seek to develop dentists who can combine technical competence with sensitivity to ethical and social concerns. Dental education and the overall higher education experience should seek to produce a practitioner who continues to develop as an ethical professional through ongoing learning, experience, and reflection. In pre-professional education, this goal requires integration of disciplinary content with consideration of contemporary issues that often provide the context for clarifying values and ethical behavior. As the knowledge explosion continues to splinter higher education into specialties and subcategories, attention must be given to integrating the campus as a learning community that promotes an interdisciplinary focus on societal issues. Higher education faculty serve as models for students in demonstrating the responsibility to relate one's area of professional expertise to broader ethical and social concerns.