Jagiellonian University Medical College entrance exam · Ethics

Jagiellonian Entrance Exam: Ethics Section, What to Study + Practice Questions

Ethics is one of the four areas of JUMC's entrance exam, Reasoning and Critical Thinking in Premedical Sciences, and the only one with nothing official to revise from: Biology, Chemistry and Logic each have a Key Concepts document, Ethics has none, and the official sample paper has no Ethics question. This page sets out what to study, built on the standard principles of medical ethics, and gives 15 practice questions in the exam's five-option format. The study blocks are IvyTest's guidance, not a JUMC list.

Read JUMC's entrance examination description

Ethics

What JUMC says about Ethics

How it is tested
'Ethics through problems that involve text analysis' (entrance examination description)
Questions
Not published: JUMC gives no split of the 100 questions across the four areas (IvyTest's paper uses 25 each)
Format
Five options, one correct; true/false items ask you to select the correct statement
Official syllabus
None: the Examination Material Scope lists Key Concepts for Biology, Chemistry and Logic only
Official sample
None for Ethics: Sample Questions 2025 has 7 Biology, 8 Chemistry and 2 Logic items
Checked
JUMC's exam description, material scope and sample, read on 20 October 2026

Read JUMC's entrance examination description

Jagiellonian University Medical College entrance exam · Ethics

What to study for the Ethics questions

With no syllabus, the safe preparation is the core of medical ethics that any problem on a short text will turn on. The five blocks below are the ones IvyTest's practice paper uses. Learn each principle well enough to apply it to a case you have never seen: the exam gives you a text and asks what follows from it, not what a particular country's law says.

The four principles, and when they conflict IvyTest guidance

Most medical-ethics reasoning starts from four principles, set out by Beauchamp and Childress: respect for autonomy (a capable person decides about their own body and care), beneficence (act for the patient's good), non-maleficence (do not cause harm that is not outweighed by benefit) and justice (treat people fairly, and share scarce resources fairly).

Questions turn on the conflicts: a capable patient refusing a treatment that would help them (autonomy against beneficence), a treatment with serious side effects (beneficence against non-maleficence), a scarce bed or drug (justice). Know which principle a scenario engages, and that in most systems a capable adult's informed refusal is respected even when the doctor disagrees.

Practise it in the full paper

Consent and capacity IvyTest guidance

Valid consent has three parts: the patient has the information they need (what is proposed, the risks, the alternatives including doing nothing), gives it voluntarily, and has the capacity to decide. Consent can be withdrawn at any time, and consent to one procedure is not consent to another.

Capacity is about one decision at one time, and is presumed in an adult unless shown otherwise. A patient has it if they can understand the information, retain it, weigh it and communicate a choice. An unwise or unusual choice is not by itself a sign of incapacity, and a diagnosis such as dementia does not remove capacity for every decision. Where a patient lacks capacity, decisions are made in their best interests, taking into account what they would have wanted.

Practise it in the full paper

Confidentiality and privacy IvyTest guidance

What a patient tells a doctor, and what the doctor learns about them, stays confidential: the duty protects the patient and the trust that makes people tell doctors the truth. Sharing within the team caring for the patient is part of care; sharing with family, employers or the press needs the patient's consent.

The exceptions are narrow: a serious and specific risk to an identifiable person, a legal requirement, or the patient's consent. Even then, disclose only what is necessary, only to the person who needs it, and tell the patient where it is safe to do so. Questions often offer a disclosure that is well meant but wider than it needs to be: that is the wrong answer.

Practise it in the full paper

Truth-telling and professional conduct IvyTest guidance

Patients are entitled to honest information about their condition, given with care and at a pace they can manage; withholding the truth because it would upset them is rarely justified, and a family's wish to keep a diagnosis from a capable patient does not override the patient's right to know. When an error happens, the duty is to tell the patient openly, apologise and put it right.

Professional conduct covers boundaries (no relationships with patients), conflicts of interest (gifts, payments, prescribing for financial gain), working within your competence and asking for help, and acting when a colleague puts patients at risk: raising the concern through proper channels is a duty, not disloyalty.

Practise it in the full paper

Justice, scarce resources and research ethics IvyTest guidance

When there is not enough of something (beds, organs, a new drug), it should go by clinical criteria: need, urgency and likely benefit. Social worth, wealth, fame or who you know are not fair criteria. Where patients are equal on clinical grounds, a fair procedure such as a lottery or first come, first served is defensible; a decision made for a VIP is not.

Research on people rests on a few landmarks worth knowing by name: the Nuremberg Code (1947), written after the Nazi doctors' trial, which makes voluntary consent essential; the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki (first adopted in 1964), which sets ethical principles for medical research on people, including review by an independent research ethics committee; and the Belmont Report (1979), which names respect for persons, beneficence and justice.

The Declaration of Helsinki (WMA)Practise it in the full paper

Jagiellonian University Medicine Entrance Exam

How the Ethics questions are likely to look, and how to prepare

JUMC says Ethics is tested 'through problems that involve text analysis', with five options and one correct answer. Expect a short case or statement and a question on what follows from it: which principle is at stake, what the doctor should do next, which statement about the case is true. The right answer usually follows from a widely shared principle; the wrong ones are often well meant but go too far (a disclosure wider than needed) or not far enough (accepting a family's wish over a capable patient's).

Because no Ethics syllabus or sample exists, no one knows how many of the 100 questions are on it. Prepare it as seriously as the other three areas: with no published split, even coverage is the sound strategy.

  • Learn the four principles well enough to name which one a new case engages.
  • Know the tests for valid consent and for capacity, and that an unwise choice is not incapacity.
  • For confidentiality, ask: is there consent, a legal duty, or a serious risk to someone identifiable? Then disclose the minimum.
  • Read the case: answer from what it says, not from what you assume about it.
  • Practise the 25 Ethics questions in the full paper against the clock, so the area does not eat into Biology and Chemistry time.

Ethics

Fifteen Ethics practice questions, with answers

In the exam's format: five options, one right. They are IvyTest's, written for this page and different from the 25 in the practice paper; none is an official question. The answers and explanations are open below each one; cover them first.

Question 1

Ethics · Core Principles of Medical Ethics · Standard

Which principle of medical ethics is the positive duty to act for the good of the patient, for example by recommending an effective treatment?

Show answer and explanation

Answer: B

Beneficence is the positive duty to promote the patient's good: to offer treatment that helps and to act in the patient's interests. Non-maleficence is the related but distinct duty not to cause harm; it can be met by doing nothing, whereas beneficence asks for action. Justice concerns fair distribution, respect for autonomy concerns the patient's own choices, and confidentiality is a duty about information, not one of the four principles.

Question 2

Ethics · Core Principles of Medical Ethics · Standard

A doctor hides a test result from a competent patient and arranges a treatment without telling her, because he is sure it is what is best for her. How is his conduct best described?

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Answer: D

Deciding for a competent patient 'for her own good' while withholding information is (strong) paternalism: it puts the doctor's judgement in place of hers and denies her the chance to decide. Medical ethics does not accept this for competent adults, however good the intention. It is not respect for autonomy, since she was never asked; the effectiveness or low risk of the treatment does not make it justice or non-maleficence; and 'doctors know best' is the attitude the principle of autonomy was developed to correct.

Question 3

Ethics · Core Principles of Medical Ethics · Standard

The family of a dying patient asks for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to be attempted if his heart stops. The team judges, after careful assessment, that CPR would almost certainly fail and would only cause harm. Which statement is most consistent with the principles of medical ethics?

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Answer: A

Non-maleficence and beneficence do not require a treatment that offers no benefit and only harm, and respect for autonomy gives patients and families the right to refuse treatment, not to demand one that cannot work. The decision should be explained honestly and with compassion. Promising CPR and then not doing it would be deception. Deciding by the most insistent relative is arbitrary, and 'trying is always better' ignores the harm of a futile, distressing intervention at the end of life.

Question 4

Ethics · Consent and Capacity · Standard

A patient rolls up her sleeve and holds out her arm when the nurse says she needs to take a blood sample. What kind of consent is this?

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Answer: E

Consent can be expressed in words or in writing, or implied by conduct: holding out an arm after being told what will happen shows agreement to a simple, low-risk procedure. A signature is not what makes consent valid. Presumed consent applies when a patient cannot consent in an emergency, which is not the case here. Nobody consents on her behalf: proxy consent is consent by someone else for a person who lacks capacity.

Question 5

Ethics · Consent and Capacity · Standard

Halfway through a procedure under local anaesthetic, a patient who consented beforehand says clearly that he wants it to stop. What should the doctor do?

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Answer: C

Consent is a continuing process and can be withdrawn at any time; a signed form does not bind the patient to finish. The doctor should stop as soon as it is safe to do so (a procedure cannot always be halted at the very instant of the request without causing harm), then find out the reason, which may be pain or fear that can be addressed, and agree with the patient how to go on. Continuing, sedating him to finish, or asking his relatives would all override his decision.

Question 6

Ethics · Consent and Capacity · Standard

An unconscious adult is brought into the emergency department after a road accident with life-threatening bleeding. No relatives are present and there is no indication of any earlier refusal of treatment. What should the team do?

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Answer: B

When a patient cannot consent and treatment is immediately needed to save life or prevent serious harm, doctors may give the treatment that is necessary, in the patient's best interests; anything that can wait until he can decide for himself should wait. Delaying until he wakes, a court rules or a relative is found could cost his life, and relatives generally cannot consent for an adult in any case. If a valid refusal of the treatment were known, the position would be different, which is why the question says there is none.

Question 7

Ethics · Confidentiality and Privacy · Standard

Which statement about medical confidentiality is correct?

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Answer: A

Confidentiality does not end when care ends or when the patient dies: information learnt in the course of care stays confidential, and disclosure after death still needs a proper justification. The duty covers everything learnt in a professional capacity, whether written down or mentioned in passing, so the other four options all describe limits that do not exist.

Question 8

Ethics · Confidentiality and Privacy · Standard

Two doctors discuss a named patient's HIV diagnosis while standing in a crowded hospital lift. Which statement best describes this?

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Answer: D

Sharing information within the care team is legitimate, but where it is shared matters: discussing a named patient's diagnosis in a public space where strangers can hear it discloses it to them. Being inside the hospital or lowering one's voice does not make a crowded lift private. The breach does not depend on proving that a listener knew the patient: the information was exposed to people with no right to it.

Question 9

Ethics · Confidentiality and Privacy · Standard

A patient is admitted with pneumonia. Which sharing of his information is generally acceptable without asking him explicitly?

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Answer: E

Patients are generally taken to accept that information relevant to their care is shared, on a need-to-know basis, with the members of the team who are treating them; this is sometimes called implied consent for direct care. Every other option discloses information outside the care team for purposes other than his treatment (employment, marketing, curiosity, or teaching with his name attached), which requires his explicit consent or, for teaching, proper anonymisation.

Question 10

Ethics · Truth-Telling and Professional Conduct · Standard

A competent patient with a serious illness says clearly that she does not want to hear details of her prognosis at the moment. What should the doctor do?

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Answer: C

Truthfulness forbids deceiving a patient, but it does not require forcing information on someone who has said she does not want it: respecting her wish is itself respect for her autonomy. The doctor should still make sure she knows enough to make the decisions in front of her, and leave the door open for later. Imposing the full prognosis, handing the decision to her family, lying about it, or abandoning the conversation would each fail her in a different way.

Question 11

Ethics · Truth-Telling and Professional Conduct · Standard

A doctor is tempted to give a patient with persistent non-specific symptoms a sugar pill, telling him it is a powerful new medicine. Why is this ethically problematic?

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Answer: A

Prescribing a placebo under the pretence that it is an active drug deceives the patient about his own treatment and so denies him an informed choice; if such deception became practice, patients could not trust what doctors tell them. Cost is not the issue, and placebos can in fact produce real effects on symptoms, which is why the temptation exists. Feeling better does not justify the lie, and the wrong lies in the deception itself, not in being found out.

Question 12

Ethics · Truth-Telling and Professional Conduct · Standard

A newly qualified doctor is asked to perform a procedure that she has never been trained to do, with no supervisor available. What should she do?

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Answer: D

Doctors must recognise and work within the limits of their competence: attempting an untrained procedure unsupervised exposes the patient to avoidable harm. The right course is to say so and arrange for someone competent to do it or to supervise her, so that the patient still gets the care he needs. Being asked, watching a video or obtaining the patient's agreement does not make her competent, and simply refusing without arranging anything abandons the patient.

Question 13

Ethics · Justice and Resource Allocation · Standard

Which statement best describes allocating health resources according to equity rather than strict equality?

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Answer: E

Equality gives everyone the same; equity gives according to need, so that people starting from a worse position can reach a fair outcome. In health care, a patient with a serious condition needs more than one with a minor one, so an equal share would be unfair to the sicker patient. Ability to pay is a market criterion, not equity, and alphabetical order or identical time ignore differences in need altogether.

Question 14

Ethics · Justice and Resource Allocation · Standard

A patient with lung disease continues to smoke. In deciding whether to offer him a treatment, how may his smoking properly be taken into account?

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Answer: B

Clinical decisions should rest on clinical grounds. Smoking may legitimately count where it changes the expected benefit or the risk of a treatment, for example where continued smoking would make an operation unsafe or useless; it should not be used to punish a patient for the choices that contributed to his illness. Refusing care or downgrading him across the board as a penalty, or charging him more, turns medicine into a judgement of moral worth. Ignoring smoking entirely when it makes the treatment dangerous would breach non-maleficence.

Question 15

Ethics · Justice and Resource Allocation · Standard

A doctor has a conscientious objection to a lawful procedure that a patient requests. Which response best balances the doctor's conscience with the patient's access to care, according to widely accepted principles of medical ethics?

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Answer: C

Where conscientious objection is recognised, it protects the doctor from taking part, but not at the expense of the patient's access to care: the doctor should say that she does not provide the procedure and ensure, promptly and without judgement, that the patient can see someone who does. Lecturing the patient, leaving her without information, or delaying until the procedure is no longer possible obstructs her access unfairly. Acting against her own conscience in silence is not required of her.

Jagiellonian University Medical College entrance exam · Ethics

Official sources and next steps

JUMC's own pages on the exam, and IvyTest's full paper.

Back to the Jagiellonian exam guide