Development and assessment of personal skills and aptitudes

Professionalism is an inherent attribute to the practice of surgery. Historically, the importance of this quality arose later than the earliest three fundamental principles of medical knowledge, diagnostic ability, and technical skill. In the modern era, society has clearly come to require that its surgeons embrace professionalism as a fundamental principle. It now stands among the six core competencies that all United States training programs teach and measure. We define professionalism as the pursuit of excellence, the display of humanism, an altruistic commitment, and accountability to all interactions with society. Surgeons teach professionalism to their trainees every day, sometimes by formal curricula but more often by the unspoken and unsuspected modeling of behavior. These methods can be structured into a teaching program. To that program, active practice and engagement in continuous professionalism improvement ought to be added. In this way, a true method of professionalism training can be made that allows for formal assessment.