Student Professionalism
One of the core missions of all medical schools is to create an environment that allows students to nurture the acquisition of advanced scientific knowledge and demonstrate clinical competencies while behaving in ways that honor the profession of medicine. Helping students to achieve high levels of professionalism is as important as education in the biological and clinical sciences; these skills are critical to students’ future careers as physicians.
Below are the professional attributes identified by the UNMC College of Medicine as those to be embodied by our students. Further, all students are expected to follow the rules, guidelines, and instructions of supervising faculty members, residents, and staff.
A student will fulfill obligations in a timely and satisfactory manner and is answerable for personal actions and performance.
A student will demonstrate a motivation to alleviate and be empathetic to the suffering of others.
Students will collaborate with other health care professionals to deliver patient-centered care.
A student will convey information to diverse groups of individuals in a manner and use appropriate means to affect the desired outcome.
A student will engage in behaviors and effectively adapt to ensure continuous improvement in the context/setting of their learning environment(s).
A student will demonstrate a positive attitude toward the worth and dignity of every individual.
Each student is provided with observations of their demonstration of level-specific individual behaviors related to these attributes at multiple defined points throughout the curriculum. In addition, frequent and timely feedback from a multitude of sources outside of these formal evaluations represents an important tool to help students develop ways to improve professionalism and/or recognize instances in which they have modeled these attributes.
See below for sample rubrics used to provide feedback for each phase:
Completing this form is the mechanism to provide feedback based on your interactions with a student. This is also a method to report significant concerns with a student’s professional conduct. It can be filled out by any individual, including faculty, residents, peers, patients, staff, or anyone else with whom a student interacts. Unless otherwise designated, this feedback is treated as confidential.