Abstract
BACKGROUND
Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that govern the practice of medicine. Ethical challenges frequently arise within the field of family medicine and may lead to complications. We wanted to assess the existing knowledge, attitude, and practice of family medicine trainees currently engaged in Saudi programs in relation to medical ethics in Riyadh.
METHODS
A cross-sectional study was carried out which encompassed a population size of 256 trainees from a total of nine different training centres. A self-administrated questionnaire containing 28 items was used. The questionnaires were distributed manually during the month of December 2016.
RESULTS
208 subjects returned the completed questionnaires with a response rate of 81.25 %. Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed agreed that a knowledge of medical ethics was important in medical practice. The most common source of knowledge of medical ethics and law of work amongst the trainees was found to be "during training" in both medical ethics (71.2 %) and law of work (60.6 %). Significantly, only thirty-eight percent participants had knowledge about content of a Saudi law of practicing healthcare professions. Meanwhile, 63.9 % were unaware of the content of the Hippocratic Code whilst 88.5 % were unaware of the content of the Nuremberg Code. Finally, 93.8 % were unaware of the Helsinki Declaration. In measuring the total scores of answers in relation to ethical problems for different values, the mean score for all respondents was 34.98 out of 50, and 51.92 of residents, got a score <= 35.
CONCLUSIONS
The knowledge, attitude, and practice of trainees toward medical ethics was found to be inadequate. It is, therefore, essential to incorporate teaching of medical ethics into future residency program for trainees as a structured course.