Background Doctors are increasingly faced with end-of-life decisions. Little is known about how medical students approach euthanasia. The objective of this study was to evaluate, among medical students and residents, the view on euthanasia and its variants; correlate such a view with empathy and religiosity/spiritualism; and with the stages of medical training in Brazil. Methods This is an exploratory cross-sectional study using an online questionnaire to be filled out on a voluntary basis among medical students and residents, consisting of: socio-demographic (...) data, an empathy questionnaire and questions with elaborate clinical cases that typify situations of the variants of euthanasia. Results From 1550 invitations, 273 volunteer participants responded (17.6%). The percentages of strong agreement/agreement on the concepts were: passive euthanasia (72.9%); active euthanasia (22.3%), orthothanasia (90.1%), dysthanasia (18.7%), assisted suicide (33%) and sedation (82.8%). Passive euthanasia, active euthanasia, dysthanasia and assisted suicide showed greater refusal with increasing length of medical training. Religious belief and degree of empathy did not significantly influence the opinion about the concepts. Strong agreement/agreement were: passive euthanasia (72.9%); active euthanasia (22.3%), orthothanasia (90.1%), dysthanasia (18.7%), assisted suicide (33%) and sedation (82.8%). Conclusions Passive euthanasia, active euthanasia, dysthanasia and assisted suicide showed greater refusal with increasing length of medical training. The external validation of our findings relies on the distinct legal, cultural, and religious frameworks found across various countries. (shrink)

Objective: Gait adaptation to environmental challenges is fundamental for independent and safe community ambulation. The possibility of precisely studying gait modulation using standardized protocols of gait analysis closely resembling everyday life scenarios is still an unmet need.Methods: We have developed a fully-immersive virtual reality environment where subjects have to adjust their walking pattern to avoid collision with a virtual agent crossing their gait trajectory. We collected kinematic data of 12 healthy young subjects walking in real world and in the VR (...) environment, both with and without the VA perturbation. The VR environment closely resembled the RW scenario of the gait laboratory. To ensure standardization of the obstacle presentation the starting time speed and trajectory of the VA were defined using the kinematics of the participant as detected online during each walking trial.Results: We did not observe kinematic differences between walking in RW and VR/A-, suggesting that our VR environment per se might not induce significant changes in the locomotor pattern. When facing the VA all subjects consistently reduced stride length and velocity while increasing stride duration. Trunk inclination and mediolateral trajectory deviation also facilitated avoidance of the obstacle.Conclusions: This proof-of-concept study shows that our VR/A+ paradigm effectively induced a timely gait modulation in a standardized immersive and realistic scenario. This protocol could be a powerful research tool to study gait modulation and its derangements in relation to aging and clinical conditions. (shrink)