Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of Osteopathic Medicine

Abstract

Context: Professionalism in medicine has been historically difficult to define, teach, assess, and remediate. While professionalism is vital to the practice of medicine, the lack of consistency across training and disciplines, combined with the often generalized nature of its description, has caused challenges in academic medicine and has led to the weaponization of its use. It is clear that change in this essential competency in medicine is needed, and change has to begin with an honest self-assessment.

Objectives: The purpose of this report is to present an evidence-based rubric for the assessment of professionalism at the institutional level. The literature on professionalism emphasizes the importance of creating and maintaining a culture of professionalism within an educational community that guides expected behaviors and ensures accountability. This rubric presents expected behaviors within the major areas of the academic enterprise through an osteopathic lens, emphasizing the distinctive wisdom of osteopathic philosophy and the guidance it provides for a new landscape of medical professionalism.

Methods: Through the Senior Leadership Development Program (SLDP) of the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM), the authors identified six key areas in which to define osteopathic medical professionalism at the institutional level. These are: Definition and Culture; Prematriculation and Matriculation; Preclinical Curriculum; Clinical Curriculum; Student Affairs, Disciplinary Procedure, and Code of Conduct; Patient Care; and Research. Within each area, five clusters of professionalism were utilized to capture the multi-dimensional nature of cultivating a culture of professionalism within a community: Ethics and Integrity, Respect, Teamwork, Accountability, and Self-Management. A four-tier scale was developed to evaluate participants’ performance in these areas.

Results: The result of this report is a multi-dimensional and comprehensive rubric that can be utilized by colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs) to perform self-assessments of how professionalism is conceptualized at their institution. In addition, the rubric can be utilized by segments of the academic enterprise in focused self-assessment and for change efforts at the programmatic level.

Conclusions: Osteopathic medical professionalism has the potential to carve a new pathway for the future of professionalism in academic medicine. This institutional self-assessment rubric for COMs is the first step in a change process that can clarify and specify how professionalism is defined, so that appropriate and meaningful teaching, assessment, and remediation can follow. Future research on this rubric will be to conduct formal validation analysis in order to standardize its application in an effort to broaden its use and potential impact.

DOI

10.1515/jom-2025-0082

Publication Date

3-19-2026

Keywords

holistic health, interprofessional education, medical education, osteopathic medicine, professionalism, social discrimination

ISSN

2702-3648

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