Assessment of moral judgment of BME and other health sciences students

Abstract

The accreditation criteria for engineering programs require that the curriculum introduce students to the ethical, social, economics and safety issues arising from the practice of engineering. This paper presents the assessment of moral judgment of biomedical engineering, dentistry and biochemistry students through the standardized Defining Issues Test (DIT). Results show that college students, as most active members of society, remain at a stage of moral development where morality is still predominantly dictated by outside forces. It is expected that after formal Ethics studies, students will score higher in the last stages of moral development, where laws are regarded as social contracts and moral reasoning is based on universal ethical principles.