Proto-professionalism and the dissecting laboratory.

This essay argues for medical students' dissection of cadavers because this activity offers medical students opportunities to have certain experiences and reflect on them in ways facilitating their development of mature medical professionalism at the time they enter clinical practice. Issues central to professionalism as we envision it are (1) cognitive abilities identified as reflective judgment and principled ethical reasoning as they are exercised in four practice domains and (2) learning to learn in medical settings. We argue further that a key feature of such setting is practitioners' having to deal with ill-structured problems, and so we identify their features and relate their management to the sophisticated cognitive and learning abilities required of medical professionals.

Learning to use learning resources during medical school and residency.

Objectives: This study (1) examined the natural history of learning to use learning resources by medical students and residents and (2) considered whether that history is consistent with the ways in which physicians approach their learning tasks.

Methods: The authors conducted and analyzed thirty-two open-ended interviews of first-year and third-year medical students and first-year and senior residents in internal medicine, family medicine, or pediatrics.

Results And Discussion: Learning to use learning resources occurs at the same time as learning done to address instructional and clinical problems that physicians-in-training face, with all kinds of learning following well-documented stages.

Proto-professionalism: how professionalisation occurs across the continuum of medical education.

Introduction: Professionalism and its assessment across the medical education continuum have become prominent topics in recent years. We consider the nature of professionalism and how it emerges and relates to the work carried out by doctors and doctors-in-training.

Thesis And Discussion: We suggest 6 domains in which evidence of professionalism can be expected: ethical practice; reflection/self-awareness; responsibility for actions; respect for patients; teamwork, and social responsibility.