New house-officers' views on unprofessional behaviour

To determine the views of new house officers (HO) on professionalism and unprofessional behaviour following dismissal in January 2007 of a HO who was caught video-taping nurses in the shower.

An anonymous self-administered questionnaire was administered during new house officers' orientation. Using a Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree), HO were asked to rank statements regarding teaching and their understanding of professionalism and professional behaviour, role model-clinicians, their response to 3 real-life examples of unprofessional behaviour, and dismissal and Singapore Medical Council (SMC) registration of the sacked HO. Participation was voluntary.

Twenty-eight out of twenty-nine (96.6%) international medical graduates (IMG) and 84/95 (88%) house officers who graduated from National University of Singapore (NUS) responded. Their median age was 24 years and 63 of them were male. All IMG compared to 63.1% NUS HO agreed that professionalism was well taught in their medical school (P <0.0001). Majority (82.1%) of IMG compared to 67.9% NUS HO agreed they had adequate role model-clinicians exemplifying professionalism (P <0.0001). Majority (90.8%) of the respondents agreed that the sacked HO's behaviour was not pardonable, a smaller proportion (83.9%) agreed with dismissal but only half (52.7%) agreed that SMC should not register the sacked HO.

In this study, only two-thirds of NUS HO felt that professionalism was well taught and they had adequate role models. NUS should review this aspect of medical education. Majority of HO agreed with the dismissal but only half felt the misdemeanor was serious enough for SMC not to register the sacked HO.