Understanding death as an intrinsic and ultimately inevitable condition of human life has always been highly relevant to the Western world and has led to various attitudes, especially among those who deal with it as part of their routine professional practice. This is particularly true for physicians, who often have to make crucial health-related (and even life-and-death) decisions for their patients. The current study aimed to observe the behavior of medical students and recent medical graduates in dealing with their patients' end-of-life moments and death, identifying the conditions and deficiencies permeating the relationship between physician, patient, and death and dying and the behavioral differences between medical students and recent medical graduates. The study concludes by recommending methods to render internal processes sensitive to this issue by means of theoretical and practical approaches aided by personal development. This study was based on questionnaires answered by 100 third-year medical students and 120 interns at the School of Medicine of the Catholic University in São Paulo, Brazil.
Death; Medical education; Ethics; Bioethics
