Has the new code of ethics for physiotherapists incorporated bioethical trends?

Abstract Advances in health technology incorporate bioethical discussions in texts that address professional care. Would the new code of ethics for physiotherapists have incorporated such discussions? Given the issue, we aimed to verify the ratio of deontological and bioethical approaches in the new code of ethics when compared to the old one, investigating relationships between professional and client autonomies in healthcare. Content analysis methods were applied to written documents in order to verify in what proportion deontological and bioethical approaches are present in the new code. The bioethical approaches compose the large part of the content in this new code (53%) specially related to the justice category which represents 21,9% of the total textual units found. Changes in the new document reveal bioethical influences in the conception of the new code, which still did not modify the relationship between professional and client autonomies, revealing the need for further discussions.