MEDICAL ETHICS COURSE IMPROVES MEDICAL PROFESSIONALISM: MEDICAL STUDENTS' OPINIONS

Abstract

Training physicians who are expert in many medical aspects is the most improtant mission of medical universities. One of these aspects, is professional behavior achievement. One of the important goals in training of ethics, is recognition of conflicts in different parts of ethics and having logical viewpoint for resolving and analyzing these conflicts. This descriptive and analytical study was done to evaluate the efficacy of medical ethics education in medical students´ professional attitudes improvement. One hundred and two medical students were selected randomly in different steps of education and were questioned and their opinions correlation with stage of education and gender were evaluated. There was a significant difference between female viewpoint (in roles of ethic course which is presented in preclinical step in professional attitude improvement) (P = 0.009) and also a significant difference was seen in the viewpoint score between student stage with intern stage (P = 0.031). Medical students in educational student stage believe ethic course improve medical professionalism. Since there is no special course to train medical students in professionalism, some interventions are required in this field to improve this aspect of physicians' professional life.