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Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults

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 o...

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Autores principales: Jean-Tron, M. G., Ávila-Montiel, D., Márquez-González, H., Chapa-Koloffon, G., Orozco-Morales, J. A., Ávila-Hernández, A. V., Valdés-Pérez, O., Garduño-Espinosa, J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9308202/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35870920
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03624-z
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author Jean-Tron, M. G.
Ávila-Montiel, D.
Márquez-González, H.
Chapa-Koloffon, G.
Orozco-Morales, J. A.
Ávila-Hernández, A. V.
Valdés-Pérez, O.
Garduño-Espinosa, J.
author_facet Jean-Tron, M. G.
Ávila-Montiel, D.
Márquez-González, H.
Chapa-Koloffon, G.
Orozco-Morales, J. A.
Ávila-Hernández, A. V.
Valdés-Pérez, O.
Garduño-Espinosa, J.
author_sort Jean-Tron, M. G.
collection PubMed
description 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 (X(2) p < 0.001); this group had the highest percentage in this category. This large difference could be because the differences in the ages and socioeducational levels of nonprofessionals are much wider than those among medical graduates. However, significant differences were also found when the profiles of medical graduates were compared with those of graduates with other degrees, since the latter demonstrated 56% at the preconventional level and 18% at the postconventional level (X(2) test, p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Significant differences were found in moral reasoning among the groups that we evaluated. Among the group of medical graduates, there was a higher percentage of subjects at the postconventional level than among the group of graduates with other degrees and a much higher percentage than among the group of nonprofessionals. Our conclusions give the first evidence that studying medicine seems to influence the development of moral reasoning in its students. Therefore, we consider it relevant to develop educational strategies where the student is involved in simulated but realistic decision-making situations, where there are moral dilemmas to resolve from their early years of training.
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spelling pubmed-93082022022-07-24 Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults Jean-Tron, M. G. Ávila-Montiel, D. Márquez-González, H. Chapa-Koloffon, G. Orozco-Morales, J. A. Ávila-Hernández, A. V. Valdés-Pérez, O. Garduño-Espinosa, J. BMC Med Educ Research 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 (X(2) p < 0.001); this group had the highest percentage in this category. This large difference could be because the differences in the ages and socioeducational levels of nonprofessionals are much wider than those among medical graduates. However, significant differences were also found when the profiles of medical graduates were compared with those of graduates with other degrees, since the latter demonstrated 56% at the preconventional level and 18% at the postconventional level (X(2) test, p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Significant differences were found in moral reasoning among the groups that we evaluated. Among the group of medical graduates, there was a higher percentage of subjects at the postconventional level than among the group of graduates with other degrees and a much higher percentage than among the group of nonprofessionals. Our conclusions give the first evidence that studying medicine seems to influence the development of moral reasoning in its students. Therefore, we consider it relevant to develop educational strategies where the student is involved in simulated but realistic decision-making situations, where there are moral dilemmas to resolve from their early years of training. BioMed Central 2022-07-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9308202/ /pubmed/35870920 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03624-z Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://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.
spellingShingle Research
Jean-Tron, M. G.
Ávila-Montiel, D.
Márquez-González, H.
Chapa-Koloffon, G.
Orozco-Morales, J. A.
Ávila-Hernández, A. V.
Valdés-Pérez, O.
Garduño-Espinosa, J.
Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults
title Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults
title_full Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults
title_fullStr Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults
title_full_unstemmed Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults
title_short Differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults
title_sort differences in moral reasoning among medical graduates, graduates with other degrees, and nonprofessional adults
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9308202/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35870920
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03624-z
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