Professionalism in Contemporary Practice
The Professionalism in Contemporary Practice (PCP) program was offered from 2003 to 2007. Each year six medical faculty were selected for training as seminar facilitators. The one-month, facilitator-training course provided participants with the background knowledge and seminar leadership skills to deliver a series of eight 90-minute seminars to faculty and residents.
Professionalism in Contemporary Practice covers key concepts and issues pertinent to 21st century medicine. The curriculum comprises eight 90-minute modules. The individual modules focus on the physician-educator, covering the following topics:
Defining & Teaching Professionalism
Provides an introduction to the curriculum as a whole. Examines what evolving
definitions of professionalism imply for expanding roles in contemporary practice.
Participants reflect on their own professional responsibilities as "physician citizens" and
then identify areas in which they would like to take a more active role.
Patient-Centered Care: Cultural Competence
Part two of the patient-centered communication theme offers a framework for
understanding the patient's cultural perspective. Describes how communication is related
to health disparities, and reviews evidence and explanations for health disparities and
outcomes. Participants explore the patient's perspective by applying tools to
improve cross-cultural communication through role-play exercises, followed by
information on how to work effectively with interpreters.
Covers strategies on using and interpreting clinical guidelines to answer clinical questions quickly and efficiently. Considers new ideas for teaching evidence-based medicine concepts and skills, specifically how to facilitate the use and implementation of clinical practice guidelines.
Reflective Practice: Concepts & Application
Reviews a framework for reflective practice and strategies to teach reflection. After
discussing tools and key components of reflective practice, participants understand the
value of reflection and its relevance to professionalism through application in several
group exercises.
Patient-Centered Care: Effective Communication & Shared Decision Making
Examines the importance of patient-centered communication and shared decision making
(SDM), as well as patient expectations around various decision-making styles. Explains
what elements motivate SDM and how beneficence and respect for autonomy form the
ethical basis for SDM. Presents two models of SDM, which participants practice via a
group role-play exercise.
Patient-Centered Care: Cultural Competence
Part two of the patient-centered communication theme offers a framework for
understanding the patient's cultural perspective. Describes how communication is related
to health disparities, and reviews evidence and explanations for health disparities and
outcomes. Participants explore the patient's perspective by applying tools to
improve cross-cultural communication through role-play exercises, followed by
information on how to work effectively with interpreters.
Evidence-Based Care: Concepts & Tools
Covers strategies on using and interpreting clinical guidelines to answer clinical questions
quickly and efficiently. Considers new ideas for teaching evidence-based
medicine concepts and skills, specifically how to facilitate the use and implementation of
clinical practice guidelines.
Patient Safety
Illustrates types of errors that occur in hospital systems and examines what to do when an
error occurs. By practicing error disclosure, participants understand why errors transpire
and then analyze ways to improve safety and prevent future errors.
Quality Improvement
Connects concepts from patient safety and error prevention to concepts within system
improvement. Provides an overview of the steps for a quality improvement project, as
well as how to create an effective mission statement and select an appropriate project team.
This capstone module recognizes the importance of team work to the "physician citizen." Assesses what characteristics are beneficial to the team by outlining roles in interdisciplinary project teams. Considers the relationship between successful quality improvement projects and skillful negotiation with stakeholders. Before learning tools for negotiation, participants discover their own conflict management style through a self-assessment tool.
Program Faculty (2002-07): Peter Rudd, MD; Anne Dembitzer, MD; Clarence Braddock III, MD, MPH;
Merlynn Bergen, PhD; Kambria M Hooper, MEd; and program alumni.
List of Trained PCP Facilitators
| 25 Institutions | 30 Facilitators | Program |
| Alameda County Medical Center, Oakland, CA | Thaddeus Bordofsky | PCP 04 |
| Duke University, Durham, NC | Sylvestre Quevedo | PCP 07 |
| Georgetown University, Washington, DC | Eileen Moore | PCP 05 |
| Howard University, Washington, DC | Jerome Herbers | PCP 02 |
| Kanazawa University Hospital, Ishikawa, JAPAN | Hideki Nomura | PCP 05 |
| Kansai Medical University, Osaka, JAPAN | Keiko Komoto | PCP 07 |
| Keio University, Tokyo, JAPAN | Yohei Ohno | PCP 07 |
| Kettering Medical Center, Kettering, OH | Stephen McDonald | PCP 02 |
| Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, THAILAND | Srivieng Pairojkul | PCP 07 |
| Louisiana State University Health Sciences, Shreveport, LA | Pat Bass, III | PCP 05 |
| Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN | John Bachman | PCP 04 |
| Mount Sinai Medical School, City University of New York, NY | Helen Fernandez | PCP 04 |
| National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, TAIWAN | Benjamin Kuo | PCP 02 |
| Northern Ontario Medical School, Sudbury,Ontario, CANADA | Sarah Strasser | PCP 04 |
| Northwestern University, Chicago, IL | Robert Golub | PCP 02 |
| North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, NY | Erica Kreismann | PCP 07 |
| Stanford University, Stanford, CA | Anne Dembitzer Jon Fuller Preetha Basaviah Laura Meinke |
PCP 02 PCP 04 PCP 06 PCP 06 |
| Taipei Medical University, Taipei, TAIWAN | Cliff Chiehfeng Chen | PCP 05 |
| Tohuko University, Sendai, JAPAN | Yutaka Nagasaki | PCP 06 |
| Uniformed Services Univ. of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD | Jeffrey Jackson | PCP 02 |
| University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL | Stuart Cohen | PCP 02 |
| University of California, Davis, CA | Sonia Sutherland | PCP 02 |
| University of California, San Diego, CA | Timothy Dresselhaus Simerjot Jassal |
PCP 02 PCP 06 |
| University of North Carolina, Carolinas Med Ctr, Charlotte, NC | Wesley Hofferbert | PCP 05 |
| University of Oklahoma College of Medicine-Tulsa, Tulsa, OK | Erik Wallace | PCP 05 |
| University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA | Ellen Gordon | PCP 02 |
Homesite Seminars
During the first year following the training at Stanford, the facilitators return to their home institutions to conduct the seminars for medical teachers. As part of the evaluation of this train-the-trainer diffusion process, the facilitators are asked to play a critical role in gathering data during the post-training year. Evaluation activities include questionnaire administration, video review of seminars, and personal record keeping during the implementation of training.The teaching of seminars in subsequent years is based on the size and need of individual home site institutions. Trained facilitators also serve as regional and national faculty development resources for instructional improvement.
Comments from SFDC-trained Professionalism in Contemporary Practice Facilitators
It was a treasured experience to see different teaching styles--ranging from didactic to interactive to freeform--and to consider the inherent value of each. Now the challenge is to experiment when I return home."
"Although I felt that my teaching skills were slightly above average before starting the program, I certainly learned many new teaching skills. What helped the most was doing something that I didn't feel comfortable doing· This will help me give better presentations in the future."
"The most significant attitudinal shift for me was the realization that my goal can be to practice medicine as it should be, incorporating the new, instead of to practice medicine as I was trained."
"I am glad to have learned skills for disclosing medical errors to patients and for assessing cultural characteristics of patients."
"This month has provided me with an armamentarium of skills for practicing and teaching in the various PCP content areas. Specifically, tools for beginning reflective practice, role-modeling, evidence-based medicine strategies such as the Process Improvement Combined ApprOach (PICO) format for questions and ideas for implementing Quality Improvement projects as practice-based learning and improvement for residents in clinic."
"Overall increase in knowledge, skills, and attitudes across PCP modules impressed me. I thought I would have preferences of some topics, but was pleasantly surprised to see interest broadly. The hands on experience with role plays and tremendous feedback helped me grow tremendously as a learner and teacher."
"The opportunity to take the material we have learned and actually teach the content--this forces us to learn the content in a very different way--at a much deeper level. Also being able to teach the material and work with it is a very empowering process. I am inspired by the "train the trainer" model."
"Most significant to me was the knowledge that others found these topics important to practice of medicine and to a careers in academic medicine; a feeling/belief I had been developing during my training but that others didn't seem to realize or legitimize. I now have the realization that this could make a huge impact on my career and the way in which I treat my patients and hopefully teach students/learners."
"My skepticism regarding whether professionalism can be taught has been replaced by self efficacy, in my ability to do so."
Comments from Faculty and Resident Participants in Home-Site Seminars
"The components of true leadership in this course made a major difference for me as a clinician-educator.""The overall impact that was most significant to me was being able to understand quality improvement and how it affects everyone."
"Team building and dialogue with others regarding patient care was the overall impact that was most significant to me."
"The seminar experience changed my understanding of professionalism; it is broader and entails much more than I used to think about professionalism."
"Making time to establish and incorporate evidence-based practice/clinical guidelines was the overall impact that was most significant to me."
"The impact of the PCP seminars on my practice is that I have been much more conscious about evidence-based medicine, practice-based learning and improvement, patient safety and quality improvement, as well as how to involve other faculty in that process. I have started to try to explicitly teach that to residents as part of my core curriculum when I am either in clinic or on the hospital service. Just examples, we've enacted 2 new protocols to try to improve our anti-coagulation and I think in part or completely [they] are related to participation through the seminars."
Last modified 05.06.2010
