Reflective Practice: Assessing Its Effectiveness to Teach Professionalism in a Radiology Residency

Professionalism can be challenging to teach during residency training. We undertook this study to evaluate the impact of a case-based, reflective practice (RP) curriculum on the attitudes of radiology residents about professionalism.

We developed a case-based radiology-specific RP curriculum focused on topics related to professionalism and ethics. This year-long curriculum was comprised of six individual sessions and was attended by radiology residents. We assessed the program using the Penn State College of Medicine Professionalism Questionnaire, a validated instrument designed to assess attitudes toward professionalism, with anonymous responses collected before and after completion of the 1-year curriculum. We also obtained feedback on individual sessions.

Our curriculum affected the professional attitudes of residents in 7 of 36 sample items on the professionalism questionnaire (P <0.05), when analyzed as unpaired data. When stratified into seven specific elements of professionalism, significant differences in resident response were identified in the areas of accountability, honor and integrity, enrichment, and duty. Furthermore, residents generally agreed that the individual sessions were meaningful and were important to their future careers (3.8-4.4 on a five-point scale).

A case-based, RP curriculum centered about professionalism offers a unique practical approach to expose residents to the concepts of professionalism and ethics in a small group setting. Based on a widely used validated survey instrument, our results indicate that this method raises resident awareness about professionalism and impacts the way in which residents think about this topic and their eventual career.