Care Ethics - Revisiting ethics in medical education

Abstract

Abstract: The teaching of ethics remains insufficient to promote adequate moral development, with moral stagnation or decline has being reported during medical degree. This study aims to discuss the concepts of ethics and moral applied in medical education and focusing on the Ethics of Care, as a contemporary model for approaching ethics in medical education and pratice. Methods: reflective and narrative review of the literature discussing ethics training in medical education. Results and Discussion: there is dissociation between curriculum issues and ethical training, with gaps related to the conceptual approach and teaching strategies. Approaches to teaching ethics, by wide range of concepts, skills or values, are fragmented, heterogeneous and often relegated to the hidden curriculum. In a contemporary view, the medical ethics goes beyond a normative or formal mechanism, but reflects a professional, humanized and patient-centered praxis, in its integrality, individually and socially. The Ethics of Care represent the synthesis of the moral values applied to medical practice, contemplating the moral virtues, prudence, justice, respect for autonomy, freedom and democracy. For this purpose, skills such as empathy and development of a high level of moral reasoning. Conclusions: the current teaching model has been insufficient to provide adequate development of the moral competence of medical students. For this, the ethical education needs more reflexive strategies, as referred to as Ethics of care.