Abstract

CAPOTE, Eduardo et al. Hierarchy of values comparison of second year medicine students vs odontology students at the university of carabobo.. Acta odontol. venez [online]. 2006, vol.44, n.3, pp.302-309. ISSN 0001-6365.

To deeply inquire on Values education is a need in Medicine and Dentistry majors because their principal objective is the human being. This comparative-descriptive paper with a quantitative perspective will allow to explore the opinion of the aforementioned students about which values are more important for them, as person and as professional, also to compare if there is any difference among the two groups, mentioned above. As a result to the open ended question: “State which are the essential values for humans to have, starting with the most important ones”, we found that the most important value for the dentistry students is “honesty” (40,54%) while for med students it was “love” (29,73%), also for both groups “respect”(26,13%) is the most likely value to appear in the first three most important values. As a result of the open ended question: “In your field:  which are the most useful values nowadays? “We found that for med students, respect and ethical values (16,22%) are most important, and for dentistry students respect (21,62%) comes first, being ethical values, those which refer to professional deontology. As for social and individual values there was an association of the variables (X2=8,30) (p<0,05). We therefore conclude that both student groups have very similar value preferences towards honesty, respect, love, and responsibility. Both as humanistic and universal conceptions and as a social value

Keywords : Values; medicine students; dentistry students; professional values; personal values.