Analysis of Work Assignments After Medical Ethics Workshop for First-Year Residents at Siriraj Hospital

Abstract

Background: Upon entering the residency training program, all 1^st-year residents at Siriraj Hospital must join medical ethics workshop held by the Division of Postgraduate Studies. At the end of the workshop, the residents were given a work assignment to write a clinical ethics situation they have encountered in their past practice.
Methods: This study is an analysis of content described in the work assignments in order to gain the information regarding common medical ethics dilemmas, which the physicians faced in the early days of practice.
Results:740 work assignments were reviewed. The 4 most common ethical principle mentioned in these assignments were autonomy (144, 19.5%), palliative care (133, 18.0%), beneficence (121, 16.4%), and confidentiality (110, 14.9%). More than half of the situations described were during their internship (474, 64.1%) and tended to distributed equally among community hospital (39.1%), university hospital (28.0%), and general hospital (24.3%).
Conclusion: This study should raise the awareness of the medical educator towards these medical ethics issues during curriculum planning.