Abstract:

Introduction:
Ethics, considered as moral philosophy, has an important place in all areas of life. For the educational staff in the field of rehabilitation, it is an important responsibility to teach the young students and trainees of clinical departments of Physical and rehabilitation medicine (PRM).
According definitions, Bioethics is the “study of the ethical issues emerging from advances in biology and medicine”. It is also moral discernment as it relates to medical policy and practice. For all medical doctors and health professionals, Bioethics is a development of the basic idea of the Hippocratic Oath “Primum non noscere” (the concept of “First Do Not Harm”).

Objective:
The goal of current study was to investigate the opinion of participants in the educational process in the rehabilitation field (learners and academic staff) – concerning their bioethical concepts and to realize a comparative evaluation of these perceptions (from the point of view of the teachers and the students – physiotherapists and medical doctors – trainees in Physical and rehabilitation medicine).

Design of the study:
Our randomized double-blind investigation was effectuated on 92 responders, divided into 4 groups (23 participants per group). All responders received the instruction to express their opinion on some questions, included in a standardized test, concerning the principles of the Declaration on Bioethics of UNESCO, the List of Bioethical topics and the educational process (theoretical and applied ethical issues in the rehabilitation field). Responders were instructed to mark the fields, considered as very important, according their judgement, and to describe some problems and dilemmas of the educational process and of everyday clinical practice.

Results & Discussion:
Many principles of the Declaration on bioethics are in close relationship with concerns of the physical medicine and rehabilitation clinical practice and the respective education, especially: Human dignity and human rights, Autonomy; Consent; Equality and equity; Non-discrimination and non-stigmatisation (for patients with disability). From the list of bioethical topics, the marked most important issues were: Assisted suicide, Euthanasia, Human research, Neuroethics, Pain management.
We can note that all responders respect bioethical principles, especially the academic staff (gr-1). Teaching staff of practical tutors (staff in PRM-Departments: gr-2) have specific respect to consider patients’ consent and dignity, for the long-life learning (medical doctors – PRM trainees and physiotherapists of the PRM-Departments: gr-3) – the equality is most important, and the non-discrimination to patients with disability is central. Undergraduate students (gr-4) responded by intuition: for them most important elements are human dignity and equality; the informed consent and the non-discrimination. Only the undergraduate students put the problem of ethical evaluation during theoretical and practical examination. Only the PRM-trainees and the undergraduate students asked about some ethical dilemmas, related to their behavior in cases of severe development of disability or critical prognosis for some patients.

Conclusion:
The academic staff, rehabilitation team, students and trainees consider bioethics as an important link between physical medicine, rehabilitation and human values. Ethics in education is the key for development of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

Keywords:

Education, ethics, bioethics, Hippocratic Oath, human dignity.