Analysis of “Assessment Tools” and development of a new tool for professionalism assessment among phase I undergraduate students: A cross-sectional study at a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital of Chhattisgarh

Abstract

Background and Objective: Graduate Medical Education Regulation (GMER) 2024 has enumerated professionalism as one of the important roles to be achieved by Indian Medical Graduates. And for achieving this, professionalism must be taught and assessed by appropriate means. But unfortunately, as it comes under the affective domain, proper assessment of it is difficult by traditional methods. Although some tools are available for assessing professionalism but they are not feasible according to Indian context. So, the objective of the study is to analyze different existing professionalism assessment tools and to develop a new tool for measuring the level of professionalism among phase I undergraduate students.
Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted from September 2023 to February 2024 on 30 students including 30 faculties after obtaining informed consent and approval from Institutional Ethics Committee. Out of many existing professionalism assessment tools, three tools were selected and analyzed and a new scale was developed which was then tested on 30 undergraduate students for reliability testing.
Results: The newly developed 15 item professionalism assessment scale showed an alpha coefficient of 0.942 upon testing on 30 first year undergraduate students. The new scale can be rated on Likert scale ranging from 0 to 3, is concise, easy to administer and to assign score.
Conclusions: The newly developed 15 items professionalism assessment scale may play pivotal role in professionalism assessment and may be proven as an important roadmap in achieving the goal of IMG.