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Teaching professionalism: a South African perspective

Background: Incorporating the teaching and assessment of professionalism in an undergraduate medical curriculum is a challenging process. There are two components that require attention: the cognitive and the experiential. This article outlines how the School of Medicine at the University of Pretoria (UP), South Africa is addressing the teaching and assessment of professionalism. Aims: To embed teaching and assessment of professionalism in a revised six-year undergraduate medical curriculum. Method: This is a descriptive paper of a curriculum process that has stretched over a number of years. The eight principles regarding teaching professionalism provided by Cruess & Cruess () are used to reflect on the current strengths and weaknesses of teaching and assessing professionalism in the UP undergraduate medical curriculum.  The cognitive component of the curriculum has been addressed by introducing a series of stage appropriate, contextualized assignments in each year of the curriculum. Faculty committee structures supported the development and implementation of this component. Students’ responses to an assignment on the influence of role models provided insight into how the experiential component impacts on their professional development. Results: The teaching and assessment of the cognitive component were relatively easy to put in place. The challenge is to maintain this component. The experiential component appears to be much the same as it was prior to revision. Conclusions: Our way forward is to expand the teaching and assessment of professionalism in the experiential component. We want to facilitate faculty to develop a charter on professionalism. The principles and commitments of the charter will underlie a white coat ceremony for undergraduates. These principles will also provide guidelines for role models in their supervision of experiential learning and can inform criteria for assessment. An assessment strategy to assess professionalism in the experiential component needs to be developed and implemented.