Do We Need Ethics? – Ii MBBS Students Perceptions in Learning Medical Ethics.

Abstract

Back ground: An Indian Medical Graduate is expected to have knowledge & acquire competencies during his formal medical course, but an understanding of professional values and ethical conduct is essential for fostering the development of a good doctor.The two major aspects of teaching medical ethics include explicit teaching of cognitive base and stage appropriate opportunities for experiential learning and reflection throughout the curriculum.
 Material and Methods: It is a classroom based intervention study involving 150 second MBBS students. Self administered, semi-structured questionnaire was devised for this study. The questionnaire consisted of two parts- students perception towards learning medical ethics and their perception on statements of ethical issues which was graded on a 5 point Likert scale. An interactive lecture was done followed by which students were divided into 6 groups and case based discussions were done. Finally reflective narration was done.Statistical analysis was done by EPI Info Software. Results were expressed in mean, standard deviation and paired ‘t’ test was done.
 Results: The mean pre-test & post-test score of the students towards learning medical ethics in current curriculum were 2.86 and 3.98 respectively. The mean pre-test and post-test score of students regarding statements on ethical issues were 2.82 & 3.92 respectively.
 Conclusion: Medical ethics is one of the neglected topics in healthcare. To strengthen ethical reasoning and judgment in decision making, we need to expose students to various ethical scenarios based on which debates, seminars, interactive workshops can be conducted utilizing the work experience of multidisciplinary medical expertise.
 Keywords: Medical ethics, Medical practice, Students