Aim: In Turkey and its neighboring countries, few studies have investigated medical students' reactions to ethics education and ethical issues they encounter. The aim of this study was to investigate interns' perceptions of medical ethics education and ethical issues.
Background: In students' first three years at the Dokuz Eylul University School of Medicine, various teaching methods are used in ethics education, including problem-based learning, interactive lectures and movies. During the clinical years, the curriculum helps students consider the ethical dimension of their clinical work, and during the internship period a discussion on ethical issues is held.
Material and methods: Data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to interns in the 2005-2006 academic year. Its questions asked about interns' perceived adequacy of their ethics education, any interpersonal ethical problems they had witnessed, their approaches to ethical problems, obstacles they believe prevented them from resolving ethical problems and whether they felt themselves ready to deal with ethical problems. 67.2 % of interns were reached and all of them responded.
Results: In the assessment of the adequacy of ethics education, the most favorable score was given to educators. Students' most often mentioned ethical problems encountered were between physicians and students and between physicians and patients. Interns believed that difficult personalities on the team and team hierarchy were important obstacles to resolving ethical problems. There were significant differences between the approaches students currently used in dealing with ethical problems and how they anticipated they would approach these problems in their future professional lives.
Conclusion: We obtained information about students' perceptions about ethics education and ethical problems which helped us to plan other educational activities. This study may assist other medical schools in preparing an ethics curriculum or help evaluate an existing curriculum.