[Are academic radiologists evaluating the professional ethics of their residents?]

Ethics is a challenging topic to teach and calls for competencies complex to pin point. Nevertheless, evaluation of ethics is a milestone on the way to autonomous medical practice. Our objectives were 1; To describe the "hidden knowledge" of academic radiologists evaluating the ethics of their residents; 2; To look for common denominators by comparing the evaluative practice of academic radiologists from France and Quebec.

8 academic radiologists were interviewed on a critical episode of ethics evaluation of residents. The 8 transcripts were coded then co-coded using a USA reference from the radiology literature.

8/8 radiologists referred to 8 common issues of ethics, 7/8 shared an extra one, related to the teaching setting and 3/8 added the specific issue of consent to radiological procedure.

The same ethical issues are shared by radiologists working in USA, France and Quebec. There are great similarities in evaluating ethics of residents among academic radiologists from France and Quebec, the diffusion of which being potentially useful to medical ethics training.