UCSF faculty shares experiences on improving educational environment through professionalism

By Dr. John D. Stobo
UTMB President

JULY 21, 2004--Institutional efforts to foster a culture of professionalism have been ongoing at UTMB since 1997. Last month, a visit by Dr. Maxine Papadakis, associate dean of student affairs and professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, served as the impetus for a one-day professionalism summit with department chairs and faculty from UTMB’s four schools. The focus of the summit was the important role faculty play in modeling professionalism.

The day’s activities included educational and work climate workshops with school, clinical and administrative representatives and meetings with the UTMB Professionalism Board and Professionalism Subcommittee, both of which work to promote professionalism at UTMB.

Dr. Rebecca Saavedra, associate vice president for student affairs, member of the Professionalism Board and Professionalism Subcommittee, and one of the summit organizers, described the day’s activities as the beginning of a new area of focus for UTMB professionalism activities. “This summit is another opportunity to focus our attention on the UTMB Professionalism Charter. At UTMB we believe that professionalism is everybody’s business and everyone’s performance is critical to our success as an academic health center,” she said.

During the day’s activities, Papadakis shared with the group measures under way at UCSF to foster professionalism, including a new computerized professionalism evaluation system introduced last year to measure professionalism among faculty. Papadakis also shared the results of her research, which found that medical students who exhibited unprofessional behavior, determined by comments in their records, were more than twice as likely as other students to be disciplined by the Medical Board of California when they became practicing physicians. The findings support the use of professionalism evaluation measures in medical school, and for the first time researchers were able to demonstrate that unprofessional behavior in medical school is associated with unprofessional behavior in practice.

Kim Hennan, fourth-year medical student and Professionalism Subcommittee member, found the summit to be a great experience. “The data Dr. Papadakis presented from UCSF and the AAMC showed us that although each university is unique, we all have areas in which we would like to improve. It’s a given that our faculty believe in professionalism, but this workshop allowed us to take it a step further. By critiquing ourselves, we were able to begin to identify areas where professionalism may be able to have a more defined presence within our departments, with faculty serving as the role models.”

“The urgent, unpredictable nature of the ER can create a stressful environment not only for students to learn in, but also for faculty to teach in; so Dr. Papadakis’ comments about professionalism really rang true to me,” said Dr. Brian Zachariah, director of the Division of Emergency Medicine. “I support what she and Dr. Stobo are advancing with regard to modeling professionalism, and to that end, I’m making sure that all of our faculty have a copy of the UTMB Professionalism Charter. I try to model that behavior for them, so that they, in turn, can model it for our house staff and students.”

The complete article, titled “Unprofessional Behavior in Medical School is Associated with Subsequent Disciplinary Action by a State Medical Board,” can be found online. Papadakis and her UCSF colleagues previously collaborated with UTMB on professionalism-related issues when the two schools were chosen to participate in the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) medical school professionalism pilot project, “Putting the Charter into Practice.”

For more information on professionalism at UTMB visit the web site.