Assessment of Ethics and Professionalism among the Medical Students of a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in India: A Questionnaire Based Cross-sectional survey

Background: Alongside clinical expertise, application of standards of ethics and professionalism is an essential attribute for a physician.In India, until 2019, a formal curriculum for medical students in ethics and professionalism was non-existent.The newly launched undergraduate curriculum of 2019 has included a module on 'Attitude, Ethics and Communication.'This study was conducted to evaluate ethics and professionalism standards among the undergraduate medical students who have not been trained formally prior to implementation of the new curriculum, to assess the gap in the same.Methods: This was a questionnaire-based study conducted among undergraduate medical students (n=192) of a university hospital in Mumbai.It consisted of two domains-A: to assess knowledge of ethics and professionalism and B: to evaluate students' attitude regarding ethics and professionalism.The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics.Findings: Overall response rate was low (27%).Mean domain A score was 4.83/11 (<50%) with a trend of increase in the scores with increasing seniority (academic year of study).In Domain B, though the mean score for the different attributes was less than 5/10, humanistic values had higher scores whereas accountability and subordinate self-interest had the lowest scores.The percentage of students showing desirable responses for all the attributes ranged from 60 to 91%.Conclusion: Undergraduate medical students have low knowledge of ethics and professionalism but have a reasonably positive attitude for attributes of professionalism.Our study highlights the the need for systematic training and scope for improvement with the systematic training on attitude, ethics and communication (AETCOM) which has been recently introduced.