Impact of a Didactic Lecture on Professionalism in Increasing Knowledge Amongst Faculty and Residents in an Academic...

The ACGME require compliance with six core competencies - professionalism is one of them. Non-professional behavior is the most common reason for disciplinary action against physicians by the Medical Boards. Professionalism should be taught and measured at an early stage of the physician's career.

IRB approval was obtained to carry out this study. The subjects were faculty and residents of the anesthesia department. The pretest was administered and followed by a lecture and discussion on professionalism by Anesthesia faculty. This was followed by the posttest. The test consisted of 22 questions related to professionalism.

Eighteen subjects completed the pretest while 14 completed the posttest. Age range was 39.72 +/- 10.58. The pretest scores were 59.6+/- 12.5, while the posttest scores were 57.8 +/- 12.8. Correct answers for each question ranged from 5.6 to 100% for the pretest and 0 to 100% for the post test. Correct answers for each subject ranged from 31.8 to 77.3% for both pre and post tests. No statistically significant difference was found in scores between the pre-test and post-test.

Based on these initial findings, teaching professionalism is extremely difficult and feed back from the participants using tools like a pretest and post-test may help identify if knowledge transfer has actually occurred. Teaching and assessment of professionalism should take into consideration the students pre-existing knowledge-base, cultural background and environment.