[Knowledge of the Advance Directive (AD) in Physicians at Tertiary Care Hospitals].

Unlabelled: The Advance Directive is generally conceptualized as the respect that all human beings deserve in the use of their faculties, to deliberate, choose, and decide upon everything that pertains to their existence, including their life goals and personal health.

Objective: To identify knowledge about the AD that Medical Residents at tertiary care facilities of the Mexican Social Security Institute (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, IMSS) in the District Capital (Mexico City), possess.

Method: Written survey with 10 questions for Medical Residents (MR) of different specialties at tertiary care hospitals.

[Expression of the concept of death by residents of a tertiary hospital].

Introduction: Attitudes of health professionals are based on their conditions and personal life experiences about life and death and are part of their professional behavior. Medical training relies mainly on physical-biological sciences and, to a lesser extent, on social-medical aspects, thus forming the physician's concept about death. These concepts may present themselves as a result of culture and as factors that model or limit the cognitive development of the physicians.

[Ethics and teaching medicine. A principles declaration].

Medicine is an old profession, having existed for twenty-four centuries. The ethical principles assumed since the beginning and have been enriched through time, culture and tradition. The stone corner of the moral commitment of physicians with the patient and medical students has deteriorated due to a values crisis.

[Medical knowledge validity: an approximation].

The fulfillment of their professional responsibilities as necessity, prevent to physicians sometimes to reflect upon medical scientific knowledge validity. In this paper some reflections about it are made considering the importance of integral vision of medicine for the physicians. This knowledge result of scientific development and special application methods.

[Bioethical reflections: necessity to promote altruistic attitudes toward medical research in human beings].

In this paper some bioethical reflections about medical research in human beings are made. The social moral obligation to increase this kind of investigation, with the purpose of enlarging resources to take care of the health of society, as well as to comply with the moral duty of keeping the integrity of the participating subjects, have placed to medical investigators face to face with ethical problems that may affect the development of this essential activity for human healthcare. On one hand, in the present context, the resistance of both healthy and sick individuals to collaborate in the studies, as possible, according to a wrong autonomous decision (irreflexive individualism).