To attempt to identify the place occupied by the ethical concept in the daily performance of resident physicians (RP) of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR).
A prospective study involving 13 RP of PMR was performed in order to identify the ethical conflicts that may occur during the specialty training. We elaborated a document for the analysis of ethical skills, which consisted of 10 clinical cases of common situations in Rehabilitation. All the questions had 5 possible answers that included indicators for the evaluation of medical ethics. The answers could be: a) Respect or attitude based on the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-malfeasance and justice, b) avoidance in which commitment to act is subrogated to an authority or other colleagues, c) lack of respect, which is the absence of respect of the patient's autonomy, non-beneficence, malfeasance or injustice attitudes.
On a total maximum range for all the participants of 1300 points, 1008.5 points were obtained. This accounts for 77.6%, which would be located in the best quartile. The group average was 25.2 points (SD 2.8), with a range located between 22.5 and 27.1 points. The questions having the most inadequate results were numbers 8 and 9, concerning lack of patient cooperation and inappropriate attitudes of other professionals in the multidisciplinary rehabilitation team.
The study indicates the need to institutionalize specific training programs for the Resident Physician within the ethics section.