[The perception of ethics from the point of view of medical students]

The present study was conducted to characterize the ethical environment in which medical students and internal are trained. The aim of this article is to identify the perception of ethics in medical students.

The instrument was constructed by pairs: the socially desirable and socially undesirable exploring 10 principles and 24 ethical values. Through rounds of experts the instrument was validated with 35 pairs with 70 statements. The internal consistency of the instrument with the coefficient of determination "r2" reached a "p" value of < 0.025.

In the overall analysis to compare means, students gave higher scores than interns with "p" value of < 0.002. A comparison of the principal differences was found in seven of the ten principles explored and in three (freedom, honesty and solidarity) no differences were noted in the rate of perception of the ethics (RPE). The were statistically significant differences between groups with a "p" value of < 0.04 in which students perceive higher scores with interns.

We conclude that learning environments are not prone to ethical reflection and changes depending on the degree in training in medical school, with a worse perception in greater degrees.