The text presents selected results of a study conducted by the authors in the academic year 2013/2014 with resident physicians, specialist physicians and medical students from the Łódź Province. The measurement was performed using the questionnaire technique; the size of the research sample was N=379. The aim of the study was to find out and confront the opinions of representatives of two groups: doctors and medical students on ethically difficult situations in the medical profession. In the entire study group, a high level of
beliefs (95%) that medics face situations and cases in their work that are ethically difficult and ambiguous. Here, medical students most frequently (59%) pointed to worldview conflicts between doctor and patient, while physicians mainly mentioned (34%) problems related to taking up and abandoning persistent therapy. In the unanimous opinion of practising physicians and medical students, in ethically difficult situations, physicians should be guided primarily by the good of the patient, putting their own conscience, the law, the code of ethics and the procedures and opinion of the patient's family in a further place. Importantly, medics were significantly more likely (10 percentage points) to form the opinion that the above factors prove, in the practice of the doctor's activity, to be inconsistent.