Perception of Professionalism of Medical Undergraduate Students of Tadulako University by Grade

Abstract

Introduction. The medical profession demands are increasingly high, along with the medical education institutions' needs producing competent doctors who are ready to perform the best medical services in the future. One of the indicators of the competence of a doctor is to become a professional. A doctor needs to be competent in knowledge, skills and also have to be professional. Methods. This was an analytical observational study with a cross-sectional approach. The subject was 565 undergraduate medical students of Tadulako University. Respondents were completed an online questionnaire about the perspective of professionalism, which comprises 20 questions about commitment to self, commitment to patients, commitment to profession, and commitment to society. The comparative Kruskal-Wallis test analyzed data. Results. In preclinical students, the first year's perception of professionalism is higher than in the upper-year in all categories. The highest mean perception score is in the category commitment to patient, and the lowest value is on commitment to society. There was no significant difference between student grades and perceived professionalism in all categories (p value> 0.05). In clinical students, there is a trend of increasing the value of the perception of professionalism in all categories. Meanwhile, the mean scores in all categories are almost the same. There was a significant difference between the perception of professionalism and grade (p-value <0.05). Conclusion. In preclinical students, perception scores tend to decrease with increasing years of education. On the other hand, there was an increase in clinical students from the first year to the third year.