A Survey on the Current State of Postgraduate Medical Ethics Education in Japan / 医学教育

To examine the present state of postgraduate ethics education for residents in Japan, we sent an anonymous self-administered questionnaire to the directors of all 640 hospitals in Japan with a registered postgraduate clinical residency program. A total of 258 hospitals returned the questionnaire (response rate: 40.3%). Of these hospitals, 69 (26.7%) had a program for ethics education and 189 (73.3%) did not. The presence of a program was strongly correlated with the number of hospital beds and a history of problems with ethics education. Respondents showed a high degree of awareness about such significant topics in ethics education as “informed consent, ” “patient privacy, ” “patient rights, ” and “physician duties.”