ALNEELAIN UNIVERSITY

MASTER OF MEDICAL EDUCATION

COURSE2 LEARNINING AND

COGNITION

ASSIGMENT 2

ATTRIBUTES OF
MEDICAL
PROFESSIONALISM
DONE BY :MONA FUAD TAHA

SUPERVISED BY :PROF.NASR
ALDEEN

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 Attributes of medical professionalism

Objectives:
The reader will able to:

Defining professionalism

Identify the importance of professionalism

Discussing attributes of professionalism

Describe implementation of professionalism in health professions education

Introduction
Definition of professionalism:

Attributes of professions such as characteristics, behaviors, commitment, goals and values are a
description of professionalism. (1)

Professionalism is a requisition of specialized knowledge and predominantly intensive academic

preparation.

Professionalism define as: the practitioners set a codes of conduct according to their standard
practice. Subsequently, elements for guarding medical practice from other competing
professions, and for controlling commercialization of the profession.(2)

Importance of professionalism:

 Improving medical outcomes.

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  Business case that most institutions attract patients by providing well trained
physicians, good environment and all facilities and advanced equipment that gives
a good services for patients.
 Medical societies and accrediting organizations expect professional physicians.
 Patient expect a professional physicians.

Characteristics of professionalism:

Professionalism characterized according to the role and responsibilities of the professions.

Arnold and stern put framework for the professionalism including (1)

 Clinical competence
 Effective communicative skills
 Ethics

The framework is modified with the permission of kieo journal of medicine in to:

Accountability, Altruism, Excellence, Humanism, Sound understanding of ethics,

Clinical competence, and Good communication skills(1)

Accountability:

decision making, and taking of liability for ones actions(3)

Altruism:

a principle that connotes behavior designed to benefit others.(3)

Excellence:

obligations to maintain a competence in medical knowledge, avoiding overuse and under use
of health care resources.(3)

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 Humanism:

concept of humanity building relationship between doctors and patients and respecting of
persons and their rights, express empathy and convey compassion.(3)

Another studies grouped the professionalism attributes in to three groups these are:(2)

Clinician ship:

This is the behavior of the health profession toward the patient

Respecting patient privacy, kindly caring with patient, appear compassion and empathy to the
patient, advise the patient and colleague as needed, accessibility and showing altruism toward
patient, communicating in a clear and effective.

Workmanship:

These attributes of colleague working together it will be in respecting manner ,working as a

member of team, flexible to the changes in workplace, acting in responsible fashion towards
colleagues, showing leadership skills, acting with confidence and be aware of ones limitations as
a practitioners, looking after one’s own health and wellbeing.

Citizenship:

That adhering to professional rules and regulations, functioning according to law, avoiding drugs
misuse, behaving honestly and being sound in judgment and in decision making and being
punctual.

Professionalism described as a social contract, thus the community recognized doctors as

professionals by their positive behaviors related to clinicianship , workship and citizenship.

Doctors must be confident, reliable, dependable, composed, and accountable and dedicated
across all settings. Personal appearance, physical features or social standing may play little or no
role in a doctor being considered ‘professional’.(2)

Personal and environmental factors are important in developing professionalism. Teaching of

professionalism differ between medical schools years that the fist years students perception is not
like final years those in direct contact with patients, heath staff and highly professions doctors .

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Medical teachers encourage their students to elevate their professionalism. Should be seen as a
necessary process to preserve and enhance our ability to meet the needs of our patients. Teaching
and learning professionalism is an integral part of medical education. Assessment at all levels is
mandatory for feedback, improvement, and to establish positive attributes in medical students.
(4)

Scenario:
First scenario
Patients came to the dental clinic with his son and he oblige or enforced the dentist to extract his
son tooth although the tooth can be preserved and treated the dentist show a high degree of
professionalism he is quite competence and confidence and he try to change the parent decision
and refuse to extract the tooth that can be treat it.
Positive Attributes: The dentist take on the clinicionship attributes of professionalism (advocate,
expert behavior)

Second scenario:
Patient attending to the hospital suffering from pain and the doctor is at the launch time and the
patient annoyed because the doctor is running late, the doctor didn’t apologized to the patient and
admit that he is coming late, the patient consider the doctor delay due to disrespect and the
doctor screaming on patients and refuse to examine the patient.the doctor misbehaved with
patient due to lack of clinicionship professionalism
Negative attributes: missed commitment and behaver

Teaching professionalism to health professions

B White COAT ceremonies and recitation of Hippocratic oath are the traditional ways of
employing the professionalism in medical practice.(3)
Professionalism, ethics, problem based learning, leadership and community based education
are included in the recent medical curriculum
evaluation of outcomes addresses the need to evaluate students to assess what lessons have been
learned and to formally emphasize the importance of learning them
Conceptual frameworks and the development of objective methodologies for the measurement of
professionalism are currently a matter of great interest and active investigation in the halls of
academia(3)
To improve recognition of the relationship of physician self-care to the ability to care for
patients, we need to recognize that personal and organizational factors influence the
professionalism of individual physicians. (4)

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Principles of teaching professionalism:
The supporting resources for the professionalism should be provided such as adequate time for
teachers.
Teaching the Cognitive base of professionalism such as historical root, definition, attributes,
values, behaviors, duties and responsibilities.
Providing professionalism perceptional learning environment
Teachers should be directly contacting with institutional leadership
Lectures, interactive session, role modeling, reflections should be provided for the teaching
professionalism.

How we can implement professionalism scenarios in teaching health

professions?
All applicants were asked one standard professionalism scenario when they are interviewed.
Number of scenarios were used for the entire interviewing season in rotation .A survey was
administered by an admissions office staff member to both the interviewed applicants as well as
faculty who conducted interviews about how these scenarios impacted their interview
experience.(5)
Examples for questions:
 If you observe misbehavior from one of your colleague what is your decision about what
to do?
 If you fall in treating some patient either by wrong way or wrong medications and the
mistake is not critical what is your respond to the situation?
 If the patient asks you to write UN prescript drug or write drug for relative who haven’t a
health insurance, how you can deal with this situation?
These are just an examples for how to use professionalism scenarios in medical education
The interviewer recorded the applicant response in form returned to the admissions office.
The interviewer was also given the flexibility of asking follow-up questions about the
scenarios and was instructed to include the applicant’s response in narrative fashion as well.
(5)
Ethics questions are important in scenarios.

In different ways scenarios can be used such as longer cases scenarios for
example:
A doctor who is a leader of resident on busy clinic, you are the chief resident and received
numbers of emails complaining at that site. The charge nurse appreciate the doctor efforts, he
work hard ,references policies, guidelines and procedure, but the doctor missing details about
how orders and consults are to be done. He accept the intervention firstly and now he became
aggressive when you ask questions about his assignments. You notice that rush of patient is
reduced.(6)

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Conclusion:
Future studies should consider follow up for students with respect to recall of their medical
school interview, professionalism scenarios, and any impressions that they now have after
matriculating to medical school.(5)
These aspects of professionalism may need to be targeted for teaching and assessment so that
students develop as professionally responsible practitioners.
Students with a well-developed understanding of professionalism may be less involved in
medical error and have the personal values to help them deal with error honestly and effectively.
(4)
.

References:

1. Mueller PS. Special Issue on the Rambam – Mayo Collaboration Teaching and Assessing
Professionalism in Medical Learners and Practicing Physicians *. 6(2):1–13.

2. Medical professionalism_ what does the public think_.

3. Mackenzie CR. Professionalism and Medicine. 2007;222–7.

4. Recognition of Core Elements of Medical Professionalism among Medical Students and

Faculty Members.

5. Kleshinski J, Shriner C, Khuder SA. The Use of Professionalism Scenarios in the Medical
School Interview Process : Faculty and Interviewee Perceptions. 2008;

6. Teaching C, Guide AT. T3. professionalism scenarios and case discussion. 2015;

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