Can Life Be Quantified？A Survey on Medical Students Based on Ethic Dilemma

Abstract Background In the process of clinical diagnosis and treatment, doctors' decision-making ability is closely related to patients' life, and moral orientation is one of the most important factors affecting clinical decision-making. So this study aims to understand the proclivity of choice by medical students and illustrating the awareness status and features when faced with difficult positions. Methods Develop an electronic questionnaire based on the ethical dilemma cases by Professor Sandel, and then distribute the questionnaires via sojump to the students in Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in order to investigate their moral orientation. Results The results show that among the trolley dilemma, the scenes in which medical students agree to sacrifice one to save another five in turns are the switch(47.6%), the side track(for a child)(38.0%) and the footbridge scene (8.5%). Postgraduates incline utilitarianism more than undergraduate students in switch and side track(for a child) (P < 0.05), and there are no statistical significances in gender and majors (P > 0.05). While in the emergency doctor case, most students prefer to utilitarianism regardless of whether the critical patient chooses to die voluntarily or not. On the contrary, students tend to choose denotology in organ transplantation case no matter the healthy man is willing to donate his organs or not. And when patient with advanced cancer voluntarily donates organs, female students and postgraduates are more inclined to the utilitarian principle than male students and undergraduates(P < 0.05). There are no statistical significances between majors in emergency doctor and organ transplantation. Conclusions This study suggests that medical students are reluctant to sacrifice one to save the other five, and the specific environment in clinical practice has a great impact on medical students. At the same time, this study suggests that medical ethics education still has shortcomings, which can be further strengthened.