Honesty academicals status by none authorized for answers evaluated among medical students

Abstract

Introduction:The evaluation of the ethical and moral behavior of individuals in the teaching-learning process is a problem that needs to be investigated. The purpose was to evaluate the status of academic honesty, with reference to the use of the cheat, among students of different levels in medical graduation. Methods: The prospective, observational, cross-sectional, and analytical study was conducted at the Olinda Medical School (FMO), including undergraduate students, of both genders and all ages who, randomly, answered a questionnaire about aspects involved in cheat practice, The study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee. The quantitative variables were expressed by their means and standard deviations and the qualitative ones, by their absolute and relative frequencies. The Chi-square test was used to evaluate associations. The value of p <0.05 was considered for rejection of the null hypothesis. Results: A total of 147 students from the second, third and fourth periods were evaluated, being 53% males, with a mean age of 24.2 ± 5.6 years. Thirty-five (23.8%), 39 (26.5%) and 73 (49.7%) were second, third and fourth periods, respectively. It was observed a greater representativeness of the knowledge lack about the concepts of cheat practice in the students of the third period (p = 0.0146) and the academic honesty state was significantly lower among the students of the second period (p = 0.0172). Conclusion: There was persistence of dishonest academic practices throughout the student training in the health information acquisition and ignorance of ethical and moral concepts.