Knowledge of Undergraduate Medical Students of College of Medicine/ University of Baghdad Regarding Medical Ethics 2021

Abstract

Background: It is important to prepare the future doctors who are ethically competent to avoid medico legal issues in practice. Subjects and methods: A cross sectional study was conducted on 373 students from (15 January -15 April 2021) in Baghdad college of medicine where students in different stages from (1st to 6th Stage) were asked to fulfil a pretested questionnaire which was distributed through internet and social media groups, it includes socio demographic variables of studied students in addition questions about knowledge of medical ethics , and data was introduced into spss v.23 statistical software. Results: shows that college curriculum was the source of information for 51.7% of the students, internet was the source in 38.1% and there was significant association between level of ethical knowledge and gender, in favor of female were (59.4%) have good knowledge ,while (43.7%) for the male studied students. All the students have either good or fair knowledge in general and there was significant association between stage of students and level of ethical knowledge which was (83.8%) good for the sixth stage students and significantly more than other stages (75.6%), (73.2%), (63.3%), (48.7%) and (23.8%) for the fifth, fourth ,third, second and first year students respectively , p value =0.001.There was no significant association between gender and autonomy ,justice and dignity ,beneficence ,non-maleficence and veracity knowledge level P value = (0.303),(0.064),(0.462),(0.114),(0.054) respectively. Conclusion: There is a good to fair knowledge in all stages regarding the medical ethics principles.