The author aims at discussing the role of medical education, while ethics is part of it , in the current crisis faced by Medicine. By characterizing ethics and technique as consubstancial dimensions of the medical practice, she elects the clinical judgment and the practical aspect of the action the most appropriate spheres to be studied. She makes evident the inseparability of these dimensions by pointing out the presence of what she calls "surprising opposites" in medical practice; among them, art and science. Thus, she characterizes the present work as a situation of "conflict of obligations" and considers its qualification a "difficult task". She discusses the appeal to ethics, proper of this situation, inscribing it in technique and concludes this inscription supports the intervention of ethics, from both the human and social perspectives. The making of decisions grounded on an opposite basis makes technique bureaucratic and exempts doctors from being considered responsible for their acts by society. Therefore, the author warns that medical education should include ethics, which would be focused from 2 stand points: as a discipline and as a practice.
Medicine; medical education; ethics, medical; judgment; professional practice