Background
Medical professionalism is an essential characteristic of excellent physicians and in most need of training. It should involve areas not included in traditional frameworks, such as physicians’ self-care and social accountability. This study aims to develop a comprehensive self-assessment instrument to improve medical professionalism training in medical students.
Methods
Mixed-methods design that integrated a scoping review, a qualitative framework method, and a cross-sectional design. The qualitative phase included focus groups with 19 medical students and 9 in-depth interviews with clinician educators. The quantitative phase included descriptive and exploratory factor analysis of 112 interviews to fifth-year medical students at the Catholic University in Chile.
Results
In the scoping review, 290 articles were screened. The Professionalism Mini-Evaluation Exercise (P-MEX) instrument was selected as the reference instrument. The qualitative phase generated 188 open codes and 468 quotes, which were analyzed using the Atlas-ti 8.0 software®. Three levels of professional assessment emerged. The micro level included self-reflection and self-care skills; the meso level included doctor–patient relationship, team interaction, and management skills; and the macro level included social accountability skills. The new adapted instrument (P-MEX-LA) contained 30 items and achieved high reliability and internal consistency (Omega 0.86; Cronbach’s alpha 0.82). Self-care and social accountability skills were the areas with the lowest level of achievement by students.
Discussion
A Latin American self-assessment version of the P-MEX instrument (P-MEX-LA) that included self-care and social accountability skills achieved high content validity, internal consistency, and reliability. It could contribute to improving medical professionalism training among medical students.
