Medical ethics and bioethics in the medical course from the point of view of teachers and students

DOI: 10.15343/0104-7809.200933.1.2

Abstract

Medical ethics is a crucial element for establishing an adequate relationship doctor-patient and understanding the limits of doctors’
professional work, while Bioethics allows us to amplify the reflection on several subjects, helping in daily professional decisions. This work
evaluated the opinion and knowledge on the subject among doctors-teachers and students of a medical course. It is a transversal and descriptive
study among students and teachers of Escola Bahiana de Medicina e Saúde Pública (EBMSP) using two auto-applicable questionnaires, one
for each studied group. 121 (58%) teachers and 506 (50%) students were the study’s subjects. The Code of Medical Ethics had been read by
97% of teachers and 96% of students. In a scale from 1 to 5, the importance given to the studied disciplines was 4.6 and 4.3, respectively,
by teachers and students, whereas self-knowledge was 3.7 and 3.0. From a total of nine questions evaluated, the average number of correct
answers was 5.5 for teachers and 5.6 for students. It was noticed that 66% of students had affirmed to have observed inadequate medical
behavior in their teachers work. It was concluded that the importance attributed to the discipline is high, but the knowledge about it is low,
demonstrating the necessity of constructing more efficient models for teaching it, models that promote the reflection on the subject.