García-Vigil JL, García-Mangas JA, Ocampo-Martínez J, and Martínez-González A. Ethics and teaching medicine. A principles declaration. Rev Med Inst Mex Seguro Soc.2011 Sep-Oct;49(5):571-4.[Spanish].

PMID: 22185862

Abstract

Medicine is an old profession, having existed for twenty-four centuries. The ethical principles assumed since the beginning and have been enriched through time, culture and tradition. The stone corner of the moral commitment of physicians with the patient and medical students has deteriorated due to a values crisis. This is due to a lack of personalized and humanized care in "altars of progress," characterized by fragmentation of medical care, excessive use of the technology and merchandizing of medicine, where profits is a priority over human need. The effects are unconsciousness and a lack of professional values, which are expressed as disloyalty, deficient solidarity, diminution of confidence, inequality and lack of honesty, affecting the patients and the whole medical relation. The problem also extends to medical education, when the students follow the same way to practice of physicians. To be a real educating physician in medicine implies an indissoluble educational symbiosis (teacher-student). When there is an ethical deterioration the immediate task is to propose alternative ethical and morals rules in medical education, which feed on values and traditional medicine principles.