Working to define professionalism in pediatric anesthesiology: a qualitative study of domains of the expert pediatric anesthesiologist as valued by interdisciplinary stakeholders.

Background: Unprofessional behavior is a significant problem throughout graduate medical education programs and medical centers. Some authors have suggested that professionalism curricula should be focused toward faculty, not trainees, to interrupt the modeling of unprofessionalism. Developing such curricula requires a needs assessment and is challenging given data indicating that the definition of professionalism varies based on medical specialty. Thus, a specialty-specific definition of professionalism is needed as a first step in any curriculum development.

Aim: The aim of this study was to define professionalism in pediatric anesthesiology.

Methods: This is a qualitative study using focus groups for data collection and a grounded theory approach for analysis. Four relevant stakeholder groups, pediatric surgeons and endoscopists, perioperative nurses, pediatric anesthesiologists, and parents of children who had undergone surgery at our facility, were recruited for participation. De-identified transcripts were analyzed and coded to derive major domains and component themes relevant to the definition of professionalism for pediatric anesthesiology. Member checking with participants from our stakeholder groups was used to validate thematic development and increase the trustworthiness of our findings.

Results: Focus group participants included 20 individuals, 14 of whom were female. Analysis of transcripts identified 11 major domains across the four groups: Patient Ownership, Specialty Expertise, Continuous Team Improvement, Expressive Communication, Active Listening, Care Coordination, Medical Hierarchy, Leadership, Teamwork, Personality Traits, and Physical Image. The data uncovered several controversies for future study.

Conclusion: A composite of these 11 domains may give a more complete image of what surgical and nursing colleagues, patient families, and anesthesiologist partners expect of the pediatric anesthesiologist. Despite some overlap and interdependence between domains, this research may contribute to the creation of future educational curricula and provides domains for evaluation of professionalism in pediatric anesthesiology.