Medical professionalism: implementing intangible skills into the curriculum

Professionalism in medicine is an important issue because providing medical care is not all about collecting recent medical knowledge and performing clinical skills. There are also some factors that highlight the importance of professionalism in the training of medical students. Some of the most important reasons include the rapid expansion of medical knowledge, advances of technology, and more sophisticated and educated patients with higher expectations (1). The identification of Professionalism by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has stimulated great interest among residency training programs on how to teach and assess professionalism to residents (2). Professionalism is defined as various traits, characteristics, qualities, and behaviors expected of a physician (3). The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) defines professionalism as the behaviors, characteristics as well as knowledge, skills, and judgment that doctors should exhibit. This definition revolves around diverse traits such as respect, integrity, responsibility and accountability, altruism, excellence and continuous improvement (4). One of the most essential competencies which is an indispensable quality for any practicing physician is professionalism (3,5). Evidence shows that insufficient mastery over professionalism, play a part in poor patient outcomes (6), complaints, patient dissatisfaction, and legal claims (7,8). These findings are consistent with a national survey conducted by the American College of Physician Executives. In this survey which more than 2,100 physicians and nurses participated, unprofessional and outrageous behaviors were identified. Such behaviors encompassed hurling surgical instrument, sexual harassment, making degrading comments and rejecting to communicate with colleagues (9). Therefore, all these give credit for designing and implementing programs on teaching professionalism into the formal curriculum of medical education. Teaching professionalism preciously states the formation of doctors who show the appropriate professional behaviors which is needed in the current situation of change with an effort to the care of patients (10). It is important to highlight that of 116 medical schools in the United States, 104 schools have endeavored to have professionalism curricula in the education and training of medical students (11). Thus, it is highly important to investigate how professionalism is and should be embedded into the course structure of medical students. Therefore, since the introduction of professionalism in medical curricula worldwide, we conducted this study based on 2-folded purposes. First, we try to briefly review the current curricula on how some medical schools have incorporated professionalism in their curriculum to exemplify good educational practices. Second, we highlight how medical professionalism should be integrated into the curriculum. In order to meet the objectives of this study, we will provide information on some medical Perspective Journal of Medical Education Development Center