Assessment of medical students’ knowledge about medical confidentiality

Abstract

Medical confidentiality is one of the basic principles of medicine, and it is expected that the professional in the field will always protect what is reported or discovered. This study aims to evaluate the knowledge of medical students at a private university in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, about confidentiality in the doctor patient relationship. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive and observational study carried out between August and November 2017 with 305 medical students from the first to the eleventh semester, through a structured questionnaire with problem situations on professional secrecy, based on the Code of Medical Ethics, Chapter IX. A sufficient and insufficient degree of knowledge was randomly established for students. Most of the students showed sufficient knowledge, and the eleventh semester obtained more correct answers in the problem cases proposed in the questionnaire. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously deepen the study of the theme in a transversal way, due to its importance in the doctor patient relationship.