The theory of planned behaviour in medical education: a model for integrating professionalism training.

Context: Teaching and evaluating professionalism remain important issues in medical education. However, two factors hinder attempts to integrate curricular elements addressing professionalism into medical school training: there is no common definition of medical professionalism used across medical education, and there is no commonly accepted theoretical model upon which to integrate professionalism into the curriculum.

Objectives: This paper proposes a definition of professionalism, examines this definition in the context of some of the previous definitions of professionalism and connects this definition to the attitudinal roots of professionalism.

Assessing the stages of pain processing: a multivariate analytical approach.

A four-stage model of pain processing was proposed, consisting of pain sensation intensity, pain unpleasantness (stage 1 affect), suffering (stage 2 affect), and pain behavior. We studied 506 chronic pain patients (230 male and 276 female) using a multivariate statistical technique (LISREL) in order to demonstrate the structural relationship among multiple indicators of pain processing; and to characterize these stages in terms of their interactions. A strong relationship was revealed between the majority of the underlying indicators of each pain processing stage.