[Ethics and values in professional training in health: a case study]

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Bioethics
• Dental Ethics

Context:

• The ethical training of health professionals, particularly in dentistry, is a critical component of medical education.
• Academic environments often harbor a 'hidden curriculum' that significantly impacts students' ethical development.
• Understanding the nuances of ethical formation is essential for producing competent and morally grounded practitioners.

Purpose:

• To analyze the ethical dimension within the training of dental health professionals.
• To identify the influence of the hidden curriculum on students' ethical understanding and practice.
• To explore the prevailing ethical concepts and the management of daily ethical conflicts in academic settings.

Summary:

• The research involved interviews with teachers, observations of academic activities, and focus groups with undergraduate dental students.
• Analysis revealed that an implicit code of ethics, often based on common sense and a lack of intentionality, predominates.
• This implicit ethical framework influences moral development and necessitates a bioethical benchmark for pedagogical-ethical integration.

Impact:

• Highlights the need for intentional strategies to address the hidden curriculum's impact on ethical training.
• Emphasizes the importance of understanding students' values to foster moral development.
• Stresses the necessity of assuming collective teaching responsibility for the ethical dimension to achieve integrated humanistic training.