Professional Behaviours Among Internal Medicine and Surgery Interns: A Professionalism Assessment

Background and purpose: The development of professionalism skills of medical students is an essential aim of each medical school and evaluation is a vital element in this regard. The purpose of this study was to measure professional behaviors of medical interns in two wards of internal medicine and surgery to acquire the needed information for future interventions and see if the learning context could have a role in making our students professionals.Methods: A questionnaire with 26 items was developed to evaluate professionalism characteristics of all internal medicine and surgery interns during three months of May, June, and July. The questionnaire proved to be valid by a group of experts and reliable through Cronbach's Alph of 92.35 internal medicine and surgery residents were trained through a workshop to observe interns interactions with patients and colleagues during these three months and evaluate them using the mentioned questionnaire by a 4 point scale where 4= exceeded expectations, 3= met expectations, 2=below expectation, and 1= unacceptable. In total, 183 questionnaire were filled and analyzed using SPSS software and computed by descriptive statistics, t-test and Pearson Correlation Coeficient.Results: The mean and standard deviation of professional attributes in all interns of both wards were 2,8±44 out of 4. The highest mean score belonged to the domain of "confidentiality and honesty" (3,11±40) and the lowest mean to the domain of "altruism and compassion" (2,51±61). No significant difference was observed between male and female interns in professionalism domains. But, there was a significant difference between internal medicine and surgery interns in the domains of "respect for others" (p=.02), "self-improvement" (p=.04) and "altruism and compassion" (p=.02).Conclusions: The total mean of the professionalism shows that interns' professional does not meet expectations. The lower mean scores of surgery interns compared to internal medicine interns in some domains shows that the learning context could have an effect on professional behavior of interns. Combining the assessment in this study with other professionalism assessments in different clinical settings will help reveal a more complete picture of students' professionalism.