[Ethical and training in intensive care]

In clinical practice and management of Intensive Care Units (ICU) there is a need for a continuous updating of scientific and technical nature, as well as ethical, in order to appropriately respond to the demands placed on professional competence and care quality. In a society where, for decades, possessing information was synonymous of having power, the most difficult challenge is the internalization of a new paradigm: allowing to share information is giving everyone the power to go further, considering that training is a valuable tool for managing and continuous improvement of individual performance, for the innovation and efficiency of the results of the Unit. By generating situations/problems in the context of bioethics, the ICU is also a place capable of developing the knowledge and intersecting skills, in which lies the ethical competence. We have adopted an exploratory-descriptive methodology, using a questionnaire, to find out the opinion of doctors and nurses in the context of clinical practice and management, in polivalents units for adults and children, with mechanical ventilation, in the northern region. The results show that respondents recognize the role of in-service training mainly as an incentive to validate practical knowledge, and as an opportunity to examine values, beliefs and moral convictions, integrating the professional ethics code.