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https://doi.org/10.29060/TAPS.2026-11-1/TT005

Tim Wilkinson

Professor of Medicine and Medical Education,
Dean’s Department (Christchurch),
University of Otago, New Zealand

“My student is not very professional.”

“They failed their OSCE station because they need to be more professional.”

“What’s the best tool to assess professionalism?”

These kinds of comments and questions are common in medical education – and they reflect an unhelpful tendency to treat professionalism as a singular, all-encompassing trait. In reality, professionalism is not one thing. It’s many things. It’s time we started talking about professionalisms – plural.

A student might be honest but disorganised. Another might communicate beautifully with patients but struggle to take feedback from colleagues. Being professional in one domain doesn’t mean being professional in all. Just as we wouldn’t assess clinical knowledge with a single multiple-choice test, we can’t evaluate or develop professionalism with a single lens.

In my systematic review (Wilkinson et al., 2009), I found that while definitions of professionalism vary, most can be clustered into five broad domains:

1. Ethical practice – Honesty, integrity, and respect for confidentiality.
2. Interpersonal behaviour with patients and families – Empathy, rapport, communication.
3. Teamwork and collaboration – Collegiality, accountability to the wider health system.
4. Reliability – Following through, being prepared, respecting deadlines.
5. Commitment to improvement – Reflectiveness, lifelong learning, system contributions.

 

Different cultures, institutions, and disciplines may emphasise some of these more than others, but none of them captures professionalism alone. What matters most is not drawing hard boundaries, but being clear and specific – with ourselves, our colleagues, and our students – about which dimensions we are referring to in a given context.

When we shift from thinking about professionalism as a singular trait to seeing it as a set of behaviours and commitments that evolve over time, we create more space for growth.

Here are some useful questions to ask ourselves:

• What specific behaviour or value am I referring to when I talk about “professionalism”?
• How can I name and model that behaviour clearly for learners?
• What would the learner need to do to convince me the concern about professionalism has resolved?
• Where might I be expecting students to “just know” what’s expected?

By embracing professionalism in the plural, we make it more meaningful, teachable, and explicit.

Reference

Wilkinson, T. J., Wade, W. B., & Knock, L. D. (2009). A blueprint to assess professionalism: Results of a systematic review. Academic Medicine, 84(5), 551-558. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0b013e31819fbaa2