Introduction: defensive medicine, has been recognized as a problem for health services in several countries of the world. It is defined as the application of treatments, tests and procedures with the main intention to defend the doctor of critic's and to avoid controversies, regarding diagnosis or patient's treatment. There are multiple causes of the defensive medicine: the fundamental is patient doctor relationship without the necessary trust.
Material and methods: the present reports it is a observational, cross-sectional and descriptive study of exploratory nature, with the objective to consider the dimension of the defensive medicine (MD) in Mexico. A survey was designed to pilot an application with Likert scale in a representative sample. 613 doctors participated to national level, with index of confidence of 95% and maximum error of 5% (p < 0.05). The questions explore the level in agreement or disagreement with perceptions, specific attitudes and conducts that are related to the MD practice.
Results: categories and degrees in the defensive practices of the interviewed doctors settled down, 38,7% were nondefensive, whereas 61,3% presented association with some MD degree (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: The defensive attitude of the participant doctors is high, it emphasizes the importance of establishing measures that stimulate their containment and fights, which will allow to improve the quality of the medical practice and the doctor-patient relationship. The instrument maintained a degree of confidence and sensitivity (p < 0.05), that its future use allows.