Medical Education Committee Minutes: April 23, 2002

Proposal for a VIG on Professionalism
By Joseph F. O'Donnell

There is a great deal of interest at the Association of American Medical Colleges through the Medical School Objectives Project (MSOP), at the ACGME which has endorsed six core competencies, at the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Medical Specialties, at the AMA and many other organizations to better define and promote professionalism in medicine.

DMS is in an excellent position to help with these efforts. Sharon Johnston, DMS 3, has been a co-author on most of the articles and a participant in many of the workshop of Drs Richard and Sylvia Creuss from McGill. The Creusses are widely acclaimed as the preeminent experts on this subject. Paul Batalden and his colleagues at the CECS have run meetings on educating the professional of the future. Joe O'Donnell has worked with the MSOP advisory group to help define and evaluate professionalism and with the Arnold P Gold Foundation advisory group on this same topic. In addition, Joe and Jim Bell have organized sessions in the Health, Society and Physician course about this topic and Joe has participated in the professionalism in anatomy program.

Our proposal for a VIG is as follows:

The Professionalism VIG will:

  • 1) Define a profession and professionalism-use definitions of Creuss and Creuss (1), Swick (2), AAMC (3) and ABIM (4)
  • 2) Review the formal, informal and hidden curriculum for instances in which these are currently taught/learned and or sabotaged (especially in the hidden curriculum) and seek opportunities to positively reinforce this subject and the attitudes about it.
  • 3) Obtain or develop curricular materials and references on this topic.
  • 4) Develop an evaluation plan similar to that at UCSF. (5)

Process: Appoint an internal VIG group: (suggestions)-- O'Donnell, Bell, Nierenberg, Hickey, Johnston, Batalden (or his designee), Maloney (or her designee), McDaniel, Bernat

Solicit an external review by experts in this area: Creuss and Creuss, Baldwin (AMA), Hafferty (Hidden curriculum), Anderson and Swick (AAMC), Blank (ABIM)

Timeline: Be ready to present recommendations to MEC in December.

References:

  • 1) Creuss,R, Creuss,S,Johnston,S renewing professionalism: An Opportunity for Medicine, Academic Med 74 (8), 1999, 878-84
  • 2) Swick, H: Toward A Normative Definition of Medicalo Professionalism, Academic Med, 75(6), 2000, 612-616
  • 3) MSOP Consortium, Contempory Issues in Medicine:MSOP Attributes Altruism and Dutifulness in the Student Medical education Program, Acad Med, submitted
  • 4) Blank, L, ABIM, Project Professionalism
  • 5) Papadakis, Osborn et al A strategy for the Detection of Unprofessional Behavior in Medical Students, Academic Med, 74 (9), 1999, p 980-990

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