Presented By: Kyle Bauckman, Nova Southeastern University
Co-Authors: Alec Reeber, Nova Southeastern University

Purpose
Professionalism is a core competency expected of medical students. Lack of professionalism during medical education heralds future challenges as a practicing physician. Previous findings emphasize the importance of professionalism, but little is understood of the nuanced mechanisms to assess it. Medical education utilizes various measures to assess professionalism. We sought to optimize our current institutional assessment strategy for professionalism by investigating faculty and student perceptions of the process. Our previous investigations found improvement in the assessment process with these guidelines, but the changes received mixed reception amongst students. We aimed to further investigate understanding of professionalism and optimize messaging of these expectations for the learner.

Methods
This study was approved through IRB review; protocol #2022-268. Participation in the study was solicited through email to all active students at our institution. Participation was voluntary. Survey responses were aggregated and analyzed.

Results
Enrolled students at our institution were requested to participate (n=152) with an 18.4% response rate (n=28). Most students believed they were in the top 25% or higher in professionalism (68%). Most students disagreed or strongly disagreed that our current professionalism system was effective (71.4%). The majority were in favor of ranked based assessment of professionalism used for Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) letters (60.7%). Assessment of professionalism observations was ranked similar to previous faculty findings.

Conclusions
There is a gap between student and faculty perceptions of professionalism. Faculty witness a snapshot of a student's behavior and early incidences may unintentionally influence future observations. Our findings suggest students' perceptions should be considered when developing an assessment process for professionalism. Interestingly, a ranked-based assessment model for professionalism had favorability amongst surveyed students. This merits future development of an assessment model that highlights exceptional demonstration of professionalism rather than targeting only professional deficits.