Assessment of Professionalism in Dentistry

Aims
Professionalism is an essential competence for dental professionals and must therefore be assessed in dental education. This research aimed to develop an instrument to assess professionalism within dentistry.

Materials and Methods
The work was conducted in three stages:
1. a qualitative in-depth interview study, using framework analysis
2. an assessment strategy was devised and panel tested using focus groups;
3. an assessment tool was evaluated in a test validation study conducted in dental outreach placements.

Results
Professionalism was conceptualised as the manner in which one reflects on and reconciles different aspects of professional practice and which demonstrates acceptance of professional responsibility. It is manifest in the manner in which work is carried out. It contains both tacit (self-awareness, awareness of others, trustworthiness, and ability to relate to context) and overt (vocational, altruistic, responsibility and accountability) aspects.
Panel testing supported the face and content validity of the system.
In a cohort of 81 dental students, staff and student ratings were correlated, all item total correlations exceeded 0.66 and all alphas exceeded 0.95. The intraclass correlations of all domains exceeded 0.96. All hypothesised relationships between domains were significant but domain scores were unrelated to student age or gender. Domain scores correlated with teachers’ global ratings of students’ professionalism.

Conclusions
The assessment system is valid and reliable and should be implemented in undergraduate dental education.