Assessment of professionalism in a chiropractic college: A design and implementation of a rubric

To describe the design, implementation, and revision of a rubric used in assessing professionalism that was in alignment with Council on Chiropractic Education meta-competency 5 (professional ethics and jurisprudence, curricular objective C: Expected professional conduct).

The rubric was designed using a grading scale from 0 to 5 by which students needed to meet all criteria to earn full points for each defined dimension of professionalism. A comments section allowed for explanation of deductions and/or comments on exceptional behavior. Comments on professionalism were collected in a log during the trimester and used to populate the rubric. After initial use, the rubric was revised to incorporate criteria that had not initially been included and to allow for greater point deductions for multiple/repeat infractions or egregious behavior. Feedback from other faculty members was also gathered during in-service presentations of the rubric and taken into consideration. Professionalism score was 10% of the course grade.

From 2016 to 2020, the average professionalism grade changed from 95.6% to 98.9%. A review of the frequency distributions of average professionalism grades in a calendar year showed that some students were earning grades between 70% and 79%. Only achieving 70% to 75% of the professionalism grade affected the final course grade by 2.5% to 3.0%.

In training chiropractic students on expected behaviors related to professionalism, a rubric assessment of professionalism guided communications between the clinical educator and students to discuss professionalism and remediate unprofessional behaviors. A rubric defining expected classroom behaviors aligns with educational best practices to use assessment methods to develop professionalism in health care students.