Validation of a Moral Reasoning Characterization Instrument in Medical Students. Validación de un Instrumento de Caracterización del Razonamiento Moral en Estudiantes de Medicina.

Abstract

This article shows the “C scale of moral reasoning” referred to “characterization of moral reasoning in Medicine Students, which was validated through a quantitative model, that at the beginning implied an analysis of medium about items from two previous scales (“Scale A and B”), which established the distribution of frequencies and the inference about the competence of population discrimination; Later, a procedure of item consistency and a total sample were done, through, the likelihood ratio, ji-square, with an amount equal or less than 0.05, ( H1 of choice), which established if the corresponding item was eligible to make structural of “C scale”. The instrument was built by the research groups, “Clinical Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine” and “Psychological development, Society and Education”, in Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá-Colombia, in the context of medical clinic practice that requires not only the good use of knowledge and available technology, but also the ability for practical reasoning, that is to say, the ability to carry out ethical, moral, political and legal analysis. The aspect of how physicians reason in their clinical work is an unexplored topic in Colombia; the good medicine is not only effectiveness but prudence and execution of
human values. In this context, the relation between Psychology and Bioethics has allowed to discuss various elements in the process of taking clinical decisions in an open and interdisciplinary way.