When should the dentist disclose the complication to the patient?
Ethics and professionalism questions in the ADC written exam test your understanding of the Dental Board of Australia Code of Conduct — professional boundaries, mandatory reporting, delegation, and cultural safety. This exam-level vignette tests your ability to apply the Code to clinical scenarios.
During a lower wisdom tooth extraction, a dentist fractures the lingual cortical plate. The patient is still under local anaesthesia and unaware of the complication. The dentist manages the fracture surgically and believes the outcome will likely be satisfactory, but is uncertain about whether temporary paraesthesia may result. The dentist considers waiting until the follow-up appointment in one week to assess the outcome before discussing the complication with the patient. When should the dentist disclose the complication to the patient?
- A. At the one-week follow-up, once the clinical outcome is clear — disclosing now would cause unnecessary anxiety about a complication that may resolve spontaneously
- B. Only if the patient develops symptoms such as paraesthesia — disclosing a complication that resolves without sequelae would erode trust unnecessarily
- C. As promptly and fully as possible, explaining what happened, how it was managed, and the anticipated short-term and long-term consequences
- D. Within 48 hours, after consulting with the practice's medicolegal adviser about how to word the disclosure to minimise liability exposure
The only ADC prep platform where every answer is traced to the guideline source.
No invented explanations. No guesswork content. Every question mapped to Therapeutic Guidelines, Odell's, IADT, and more — so you study what the exam actually tests.
Score high, pay less.
Think you already know your stuff? 15 questions. One attempt. Your score sets your discount — up to 50% off any plan, locked for 72 hours.
Try Reviz on WhatsApp.
A cited question every morning — free until the day you sit. No app, no card, no signup. Just open WhatsApp.
Show the answer and cited explanation
Section 3.10 sets out the open disclosure obligations sequentially: recognise what has happened (3.10a), take immediate action to rectify if possible (3.10b), explain to the patient as promptly and fully as possible what has happened and the anticipated short- and long-term consequences (3.10c). The word 'promptly' precludes waiting for the follow-up or for symptoms to appear. Option A delays disclosure to manage the dentist's comfort, not the patient's right to information. Option B makes disclosure conditional on adverse outcomes — the Code requires disclosure of the event itself, not just its consequences. Option D introduces a delay for legal positioning that is inconsistent with 'prompt' disclosure.
Exam preparation FAQ
Every answer, traced to the source.
Remy — the AI tutor inside Reviz — drills you on 7,000+ ADC-style cited questions with spaced repetition, on WhatsApp and the web.
Take the Remy Challenge