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National and chapter news

2010 Edward D. Harris Professionalism Award winners

The Board of Directors of Alpha Omega Alpha is pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 Edward D. Harris Professionalism Award. The award emphasizes AΩA's commitment to its belief that professionalism is a crucial facet of being a physician, a quality that can be both taught and learned. Originally named the AΩA Professionalism Fellowship, the award has been renamed to honor Edward D. Harris, the longtime executive director of the society, who died in May. Applications were open to medical schools with active AΩA chapters. Faculty who have demonstrated personal dedication to teaching and research in specific aspects of professionalism that could be transferred directly to medical students or resident physicians were encouraged to apply for these funds.

The winners of the 2010 Edward D. Harris Professionalism Award are:

Louise Aronson, MD, MFA
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine

Dr. Aronson received $20,000 funding for her project, "Improving the Learning Environment for Professionalism by Implementing and Assessing a Faculty Development Program on Reflection."

Critical reflection is considered both a core component of professionalism and a tool useful in the promotion and assessment of professionalism. Moreover, reflection allows both educators and learners to consider those aspects of professionalism cited in the literature as inadequately addressed by traditional approaches to professionalism education: the informal curriculum, clinical uncertainty and behavioral gray areas, medical system complexities, the context and conflicts leading to unprofessional behaviors and the reasons students' make the choices they do. Dr. Aronson's project is designed to improve the learning environment for professionalism by implementing a faculty development program on reflection and assessing its impact on educators' knowledge and attitudes about reflection, the feedback educators give students on reflections related to the professionalism competency, and participants' dissemination to other core faculty of strategies for teaching reflection.

C. Scott Hultman, MD, MBA, FACS
Chief and Program Director, UNC Plastic Surgery, Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

Dr. Hultman received $16,000 funding for his project, "Understanding and Achieving Professionalism in a Surgical Practice."

Because few formal courses exist at the medical student level to address professionalism in medicine, Dr. Hultman's project proposes adding an elective to the curriculum at the UNC School of Medicine that introduces this important concept to the senior medical student. The suggested curriculum will specifically address the conduct for surgeons in training and in practice. The project is designed to improve knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding professionalism, to understand the role of professionalism in a surgical practice, and to achieve and maintain competency in professionalism as a health care provider.

Heather Johnston, MD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine
Shalini Reddy, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine

Dr. Johnston and Dr. Shalini received $14,000 for their project, "Enhancing Professionalism in the Developing Doctor: The GROW (Guided Reflective Online Writing) Project."

Educators have struggled with the optimal format for teaching professionalism to students, and have found success in methods that are based on context and experience, such as the use of reflection to work through critical events. Purposeful and guided reflection can help students constructively analyze events that shed a spotlight on the principles of professionalism that are taught versus those espoused by the informal curriculum. The project is designed to teach and facilitate medical students' purposeful and guided reflections on professionalism beginning in the first year, and to enhance students' self-efficacy in identifying and processing events that impact their professional development.