2Medical Sciences of the Master and Doctorate Program in Medical, Odontological and Health Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
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D. Ávila-Montiel
3Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Tercer piso Edificio Hemato-Oncología e Investigación, Calle Dr. Márquez 162, Col. Doctores, CP 06720, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City, Mexico
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H. Márquez-González
1Department of Clinical Research, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico
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1Department of Clinical Research, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico
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4Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico
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1Department of Clinical Research, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico
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1Department of Clinical Research, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico
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J. Garduño-Espinosa
3Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Tercer piso Edificio Hemato-Oncología e Investigación, Calle Dr. Márquez 162, Col. Doctores, CP 06720, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City, Mexico
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Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer
1Department of Clinical Research, Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico
2Medical Sciences of the Master and Doctorate Program in Medical, Odontological and Health Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
3Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Tercer piso Edificio Hemato-Oncología e Investigación, Calle Dr. Márquez 162, Col. Doctores, CP 06720, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City, Mexico
4Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez, Mexico City, Mexico
J. Garduño-Espinosa, Email: moc.liamg@02selaromsamelid.
Received 2021 Sep 24; Accepted 2022 Jul 12.
Copyright © The Author[s] 2022
Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author[s] and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit //creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver [//creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/] applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Associated Data
Data Availability StatementThe datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the sensitive nature of the data but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abstract
Background
Reasoning and moral action are necessary to resolve day-to-day moral conflicts, and there are certain professions where a greater moral character is expected, e.g., medicine. Thus, it is desirable that medical students develop skills in this field. Some studies have evaluated the level of moral reasoning among medical students; however, there are no comparative studies involving other types of populations. Therefore, the objective of this study was to compare the moral reasoning among medical graduates with that of a group of young graduates with other degrees and of a group of nonprofessional adults.
Methods
An exploratory cross-sectional study was conducted. Pediatric residents and pediatric subspecialty residents at a pediatric hospital were invited to participate, forming the group of “medical graduates”. A group of young people from a social program and students with a master’s degree in a science from the same pediatric hospital were also invited to participate, comprising the group of “graduates with other degrees”. Finally, a group of beneficiaries of a family clinic was invited to participate, which we categorized as “nonprofessionals”. To evaluate the differences in moral reasoning between these 3 groups, we applied the Defining Issues Test [DIT], a moral reasoning questionnaire designed by James Rest using Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.
Results
The moral reasoning of 237 subjects—88 from the “medical graduates” group, 82 from the “graduates with other degrees” group and 67 from the “nonprofessionals” group— was evaluated. We found differences in the profiles of moral development of the groups. The profile of the “nonprofessionals” showed a very high predominance of subjects at the preconventional level, 70%, but only 4.5% at the postconventional level. Among the “medical graduates”, we observed 37.5% at the preconventional level and 34% at the postconventional level [X2 p