This article discusses teaching activities and practical learning at an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a public university hospital in Rio de Janeiro. The professional training of physicians does not merely consist of assimilating new information, because it is in the practical internships that the student becomes a true professional. Teaching and learning have proven to be very important in ethnographic research - focusing on the process of taking medical decisions about life, suffering and the death of ICU patients. The development of a medical professional identity during ICU internships includes acquiring new ways of looking at and decoding the human body in the light of multiple knowledge and new ways of communicating, as well as ways developed by the team for managing emotions. Throughout this medical learning process, the student must learn how to position himself vis à vis ethical dilemmas, which are particularly relevant in an ICU.
Medical education; intensive care unit; medical ethics
