BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Medical ethics is one of the lessons which were added to general medical curriculum in recent years. Experimental nature of this course requires having its own training and assessment methods. In this way, the viewpoints of the teachers can have a prominent role. This study aimed to determine teacher's opinions about teaching and evaluation methods of medical ethics course at Shiraz and Jahrom Universities of Medical Sciences in the year 2012.

METHODS: This cross sectional study was carried out in the year 2012 at Shiraz and Jahrom Universities of Medical Sciences.The study population consisted of teachers of medical ethics at these two universities. Sampling was performed as census and all medical ethics teachers (23 persons) were enered to this study. The study instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire which its validity was approved by the five expert's opinions and its reliability was determined as Cronbach's alpha measure 74%. This questionnaire had four main areas: 1- Appropriate time for teaching. 2- Appropriate place for teaching. 3- Appropriate method for teaching. 4- Appropriate method for evaluation which was set as the 5-choices Likert scales from completely agreed to completely disagree. The questionnaires were sent to the teachers and delivered after filling out. Obtained data were analyzed with SPSS version 14 package as descriptive statistics.

FINDINGS: Based on the teachers opinion, the best time for teaching was clerckship period (43.5%), internship in second place (30.4%) and basic sciences in the last place (8.7%). the best palce for teaching was classroom (43.5%) and Clinical Skills Lab in second place (21.7%). The best method for teaching was lecture (56.5%) and group discussion (21.7%). The best way of evaluation was written exam (52.2%) and work report and observation of medical interview correspond with 17.4% and 8.7% were in second and third places.

CONCLUSION: It is suggested that to teach this lesson as a longitudinal course especially in clinicalcourse. In the other words, the concepts made simple or quite theoretical can be tought in the basic sciences phase; practical and complex concepts can be tought in the clinical phase. Although in this study, lecturing and writing exams are most welcome, but this may be due to the lack of familiarity of the teachers with other existing methods.