The ability to measure professionalism within any discipline is not an easy endeavor given the breadth and depth of concepts associated with professionalism, how professionalism may change over time with experience and clinical mastery, and the ability to adequately define valid and reliable measures that incorporate behaviors, values, and attitudes. Other professions are confronted by the challenge of assessing and measuring professionalism for the purpose of admissions, student professional educational preparation, and clinical practice for practitioners. The assessment of professionalism is one of the more challenging areas that many professions are wrestling with at this time. In March 2006, the APTA Board of Directors approved an exploration with other doctoring professions (ie, Medicine, Pharmacy, Audiology, Osteopathy, Dentistry, Nursing, Psychology, and the National Board of Medical Examiners) of the measurement of interprofessional professionalism facilitated by the Director of Academic/Clinical Education Affairs. This group has compiled key resources and research from the different professions, identified and defined terms associated with professionalism applicable to all involved doctoring professions, and identified a series of steps and initiatives that could lead to the collaborative development of a mechanism to measure interprofessional professionalism.

 

In 2008, the Consultant Group on Interprofessional Professionalism will be providing invited panel presentations to the various representative professions at their national conferences. Members of this group will share their work in-progress to stimulate participant thinking, facilitate discussion about interprofessional professionalism across the varied representative professions involved in this process, and provide participants with an opportunity to provide direct feedback about a set of interprofessional professionalism behaviors through an online survey. The opportunities for engaging in and expanding a discussion about interprofessional professionalism and for continued collaboration with other health professions are plentiful and will continue to drive the process associated with this consultant group.