INTRODUCTION: Professional identity formation includes a process of moral development that is engaged with career values and care for health. In this process, there are elements that organize the way we understand the world – the moral foundations and the morality related to the profession, the professional identity. OBJECTIVES: This study aims at analyzing the interface between moral judgment, professional identity, and the moral foundations of medical students. From the importance of moral foundations in conflict situations and moral decisions comes the need to analyze the role that moral foundations – care, fairness, liberty, authority, loyalty, and sanctity – play in decision-making processes involving healthcare ethical dilemmas. MATERIALS AND METHOD: We have applied an online questionnaire containing two different scales of professional identity The Clarity of Professional Identity Scale (CPI); Macleod Clark Professional Identity Scale (MCPIS-9); a moral dilemma from the Moral Competence Test; and Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFVs). To analyze the questionnaire submissions we conducted reliability tests based on Cronbach’s alpha and dimensionality through factor analysis. The correlations were made after the Pearson correlation coefficient calculation. Indexes with p-value lower than 0,05 were considered statistically significant. In this study, the participants were older than 18, with all of them being medical students from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná. RESULTS: The moral foundations had significant correlation with moral judgment in front of the presented dilemma. Fairness, emotional care, and loyalty were related to matters of the dilemma closer to the patient’s well-being. Liberty was more related with the responsibility they felt they had with the patient; physical-human care and professional identity were related to legal aspects. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: Even decisions to moral dilemmas related to clinical practice activate moral foundations that are not necessarily linked to ethics/professional morality. The correlations pointed out that decisions related to the sensibility of others are more related to the personal moral foundations than to their professional identity. The study suggests the removal of the feeling of compassion as they move toward preconceived conducts that have been socially imposed on the professional identity of being a doctor. If this is the way that professional identity is trailing – acting with a legalist basis and small commitment in front of people, we should rethink our professional formation process. This study creates opportunities for new correlation verifications between moral foundations, moral development, moral decisions, professional identity and also inspires new studies on the identification of moral foundations in students from the health area.
