Assessment of Professionalism in Surgery

Professionalism may be defined as the obligation of the physician to uphold the primacy of the patients’ interests, to achieve and maintain medical competency, and to abide by high ethical standards. In the current climate of change, the balance of increased workload with increased patient demands due to commercialisation and media sensationalism, professional values may become compromised. Therefore, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) advocates that professionalism should be included in teaching and assessing the competency of trainees. During the course of medical training, assessment of professionalism must be given high priority as a determining factor in trainee's satisfactory completion of educational requirements and performance in health care delivery. However, for the comprehensive assessment of an abstract term like professionalism, structured performance assessment for both maximal and typical performance are required. The assessment of professionalism can be complex as variables that need to be quantified to determine professional capabilities vary considerably and lack of a suitable framework to assist surgeons in the assessment of their own professional performance or that of their colleagues is the main hindrance in this process. Here we review the available assessment modalities for professionalism with respect to the professional standards of “Good Clinical Practice.”