ABSTRACT
This paper reviews the current status of the teaching of bioethics and palliative care in medical schools across the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The teaching of palliative care in the state’s medical courses is paramount to students’ understanding of the medicine-physician-interdisciplinary healthcare team’s handling of the terminal nature of human life. A case study of a qualitative nature was employed in order to analyze 28 medical schools registered by the Ministry of Education and Culture, with structured interviews conducted in the aim of identifying how palliative care is taught across the medical courses. Field work was therefore conducted via these structured interviews held with students in two medical schools. Thereafter, students in their final year of the medical course and on hospital-school internships in two medical schools were interviewed. The results show that those responsible for the curricula are unconcerned about knowledge dissemination in bioethics, with their focus instead on palliative care and on the training of physicians to provide support to emergent needs in this field of science. Considering the lack of concern over the teaching of bioethics with a focus on palliative care in the medical schools’ formal curricula, we propose a reflection and programmatic action on the training of teachers in this field of knowledge, as well as the insertion of palliative care teaching into the schools’ degree curricula.
Ethics; Bioethics; Palliative Care; Medical Education
