Knowledge of medical ethics among medical students in Salvador

Abstract

This is a cross-sectional, observational study conducted between August and October 2018, to survey knowledge of medical ethics among 601 medical college students of a private university in the city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Were collected the data through a multiple-choice questionnaire with a simulation of seven cases involving ethical conflicts. The participants were mostly young females, and part of them had a previous academic degree. Most students reported having read the code of medical ethics and considered its language easy to understand. Except for some slight variations, knowledge of medical ethics proved to be progressive over the semesters, and the best performance was in the last semester of the program.