A Ten-Year Comparative Study on Ethical Cognition of Experimental Animals among Medical Students in a University / 中国医学伦理学

ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to understand the changes in the ethical cognition status of laboratory animals and the effectiveness of laboratory animal ethics education among medical students in Xiangya School of Medicine of Central South University (CSU), and provide new enlightenment for further strengthening the ethical education of laboratory animals. In the study, the same self-compiled questionnaire was used to investigate the ethical cognition of experimental animals among medical students in Xiangya School of Medicine of CSU in 2011 and 2021, and 359 and 363 questionnaires were collected respectively. Through comparative analysis of the questionnaire results before and after ten years, it was found that medical students’ animal experiment operation and attitudes towards laboratory animals, cognition of experimental animal ethics knowledge and their attitude to animal experiment ethics education were significantly improved. It showed that the state of experimental animal ethics cognition among medical students in Xiangya School of Medicine of CSU had improved significantly in recent 10 years, but the cognition of experimental animal ethics knowledge was higher than the actual behavior of caring for experimental animals, and there was the phenomenon of "separation of knowledge and action". The ethics education of experimental animals needs to pay more attention to the development of students’ behavior of caring for experimental animals.