Moral reasoning, professionalism, and the teaching of ethics to orthopaedic surgeons.

Moral reasoning is not the only component of moral behavior, but it is an important and measurable constituent. Eighty orthopaedists, who took a standardized test of moral reasoning, showed marked heterogeneity in scores, ranging from the level of junior high students to the level of moral philosophers. This variability poses difficulty for those who plan educational courses in ethics, but is not an insurmountable difficulty.