Awareness of medical ethics among undergraduates in a West Bengal medical college.

This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the knowledge of and attitudes towards medical ethics among undergraduate medical students. It also looked at whether there was any improvement with additional years of medical education. 340 medical students of a medical college in West Bengal were given a semi-structured questionnaire that included questions regarding their awareness of ethics, their attitudes towards various issues in clinical ethics, and their knowledge of the code of medical ethics of the West Bengal Medical Council. The responses of 322 students were analysed by simple descriptive statistics. The students generally agreed that awareness of ethics was important. Lectures (54.7%) and books (47.8%) were their predominant sources of knowledge. Only 10.9 % were aware of the existence of an institutional ethics committee and 42.8% did not know its exact role. Their answers showed that the majority of students expressed mixed responses--both desirable and undesirable--in relation to questions exploring different aspects of basic ethical reasoning in their professional life. The most desirable response for each statement was decided by experts of forensic medicine and also from a literature study. Only half the respondents (50.9%) had a good score (61-70 out of a total possible 90) and 37.2% had a fair score (51-60). There was no increase in scores corresponding with additional years of medical education.