Defining professionalism in medical education: a systematic review

We undertook a systematic review and narrative synthesis of the literature to identify how professionalism is defined in the medical education literature.

Eligible studies included any articles published between 1999 and 2009 inclusive presenting viewpoints, opinions, or empirical research on defining medical professionalism.

We identified 195 papers on the topic of definition of professionalism in medicine. Of these, we rated 26 as high quality and included these in the narrative synthesis.

As yet there is no overarching conceptual context of medical professionalism that is universally agreed upon. The continually shifting nature of the organizational and social milieu in which medicine operates creates a dynamic situation where no definition has yet taken hold as definitive.