Responses to moral dilemmas in medical students and psychiatric residents

There has been an increasing interest in the area of medical ethics as indicated not only by the recent proliferation of books and articles but also in the re-emergence of crucial moral issues such as euthanasia, abortion and the like. The difficulty with the existing literature is that these reports are often descriptive, anecdotal and situationally relative to the decision maker. In this study, the authors utilized a cognitive developmental approach to studying responses to moral situations not only because this approach is cross-culturally universal but also because it is not subject to situational variables. In this regard, the results of the assessment of medical students and psychiatric residents are presented as well as a comparison of moral reasoning stages in relation to the C.M.A. Code of Ethics. Recommendations for further research are presented.