On “Professionalism”

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If you’ve seen the movie Shawshank Redemption, you’ll recall a scene where Red discusses the word “rehabilitated” and how it’s made to keep the powerful people in power.

1967 Parole Hearings Man: Ellis Boyd Redding, your files say you've served 40 years of a life sentence. Do you feel you've been rehabilitated?
Red: Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.
1967 Parole Hearings Man: Well, it means that you're ready to rejoin society...
Red: I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it's just a made up word. A politician's word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?
1967 Parole Hearings Man: Well, are you?
Red: There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bull**** word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a ****.

To me, this is the same as professionalism. It’s a politician’s word, without any meaning. It’s meant as the “etc.” at the end of the law book when administrators cannot think of new laws to add but want to leave actions open for discussion. They throw words around like professionalism to target any action or behavior they dislike.

Are there cases of unprofessional behavior? Absolutely. But they should be defined by things other than professionalism. Not left as a vague word open for anyones interpretation. It’s a medical schools instrument of intimidation and power.

Any case of unprofessional behavior can be defined by other words. “Disrespect to authority” “racism” “drug use” “truancy”. Cases that cannot be defined by these real words should not be considered.
 
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KeikoTanaka said:
"Well I posted a bunch of things online but that's MY domain, how dare my school for saying what I can and can not post - It wasn't unprofessional, they just didn't like it personally!" - after posting a bunch of ass shots on Instagram lol
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But it helps my “brand”!! Just look at all the likes I get!
 
Ah yes, I remember the day it fully sunk in that my med school basically owned my bitch ass... It was a humbling experience. I look forward to having my bitch ass owned by residency next.
 
zero0 said:
Ah yes, I remember the day it fully sunk in that my med school basically owned my bitch ass... It was a humbling experience. I look forward to having my bitch ass owned by residency next.
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Yeah, I think it was last month, so about 8 months in, I fully realized and came to the conclusion that my life was theirs. All my classmates complain about XYZ and I just sit there and smile. I've pledged a fraternity, I understand doing bull **** when you don't want to. Wasn't even allowed to talk to my friends at one point. Feels like the military except we're not in barracks waiting for our lieutenant to come in with a blowhorn at 3 am to wake us up to go on a 3 mile run. But basically its that.
 
KeikoTanaka said:
Yeah, I think it was last month, so about 8 months in, I fully realized and came to the conclusion that my life was theirs. All my classmates complain about XYZ and I just sit there and smile. I've pledged a fraternity, I understand doing bull **** when you don't want to. Wasn't even allowed to talk to my friends at one point. Feels like the military except we're not in barracks waiting for our lieutenant to come in with a blowhorn at 3 am to wake us up to go on a 3 mile run. But basically its that.
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That's what I don't understand about some people. They throw fits about everything, and sure some stuff gets changed, but part of what that's doing is making your name and face pretty well known (and usually not in a positive light, because most med students don't know how to not come off like they're throwing a tantrum). All it takes is a "doesn't do well with authority" or "doesn't work well in a team" to sink your residency app.

I agree with the fraternity pledging helping haha ya do what you gotta do while keeping quiet, then when you're free of repercussions then go back and throw a fit if you want to
 
Again, this attitude above is not an isolated incidence to medical school students. We're seeing it more and more in new residents as well. They come in with the same entitled med student mindset as OP. They complain about how hard they have to work, the long hours, how it's unfair that they have to do all the work while the attendings just hang out, how poorly they get paid, bla bla wa wa wah.

Listen, I'm not trying to minimize resident plight and they do get overworked and abused by hospital systems as cheap labor. I was just in that place not too long ago but it's just stupid to think that this profession, at least during training, should be tailored like a 9-5 job. There's a loss of perspective in a lot of these new residents/med students about what medicine is truly about. People don't get sick within the hours of 9-5. People will die from your inattentiveness. It's ****ing training to make sure you don't kill people ... it's supposed to be hard. There's a lot of information to cover and things to see during it.

Your patients are not just checkboxes you cross to get home. They're ****ing real people, with real families and real problems. If you treat it like a 9-5 that's fine but just remember this simple question. If you or your loved ones ever needed an urgent/emergent problem addressed think about who you want treating you. Some lazy **** looking at it as a 9-5 clock in clock out problem or someone who sees beyond the inconveniences of a profession and sees you as an individual. The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would others do to you. That ultimately is your "professionalism" in a nut shell.
 
I think what people don't realize is that by being told to do things you don't agree with, it's actually preparing you for life in the real world. There will be soooo many policies and things you don't want to follow or agree with. But you will follow them, or you will lose your job. They don't see it that way - They think this is just undergraduate 2.0. This is not. People forget that the moment you're accepted to medical school, you got the job! Congrats you're hired, you will be a Doctor. But now you have a 7-10 year training period, unlike the typical 2 week training period at a minimum wage job. And instead of going out and spending 100$ on the proper polo and khakis to wear to work, you're spending 400,000$ on the materials and knowledge. This isn't school, it's job training, so get used to it cuz that's what a real life job is going to be. You deal with a bunch of stuff you don't agree with. Now, that doesn't mean you don't try and work towards changing things you don't agree with... but you need to learn where to pick your battles, because you're not going to change everything.
 
Med school is considered “professional school.” Professionalism is an expectation - it is a vague term but you know it when you see it.

Unfortunately, many students just can’t seem to get it together. The hope is that if they make it through school, professionalism will be beaten into them during residency.
 
Professionalism is like pornography. Most people can't truly define it, but everyone knows it when they see it. That said, it's basically a code word for "don't be an ass."

As to the post from @getdown, while I agree that there are a lot of entitled residents out there, it isn't okay that residency is an abusive environment. Some residents come in entitled and those residents suck, but what makes most residents entitled is the abuses and trauma (yes, trauma, I will say it and stand by it, because for some, it's true), they suffer. To rally against the entitlement without fully appreciating the cause is short-sighted and only perpetuates both the entitlement and the abuse.
 
Mass Effect said:
Professionalism is like pornography. Most people can't truly define it, but everyone knows it when they see it. That said, it's basically a code word for "don't be an ass."

As to the post from @getdown, while I agree that there are a lot of entitled residents out there, it isn't okay that residency is an abusive environment. Some residents come in entitled and those residents suck, but what makes most residents entitled is the abuses and trauma (yes, trauma, I will say it and stand by it, because for some, it's true), they suffer. To rally against the entitlement without fully appreciating the cause is short-sighted and only perpetuates both the entitlement and the abuse.
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Like I've said, I'm not that far out of training to not remember the **** we had to go through. So, far from it being short sighted or perpetuates anything I can now see it from both sides while most residents only see it from the resident spot. Furthermore, as much as people like to state abuses happen they're by far in the minority. Are there programs that abuse their residents? Sure. Are there programs that try to address resident complaints but the residents still complain anyway? Yes. So let's not be black and white here about claiming that abuses happen thereby every ****ty thing that happens in residency is somewhat associated with an "abusive" culture. Some residents are just lazy ****s and it's just so that there's more of them in the current millenial batch. And for abuses, there are certain recourses people can do to address abuses in their training programs ... see the USC cardiology dept. The current environment is such that any complaint/allegation of abuses will generally be looked at closely. My post addresses only those lazy entitled residents.
 
getdown said:
Like I've said, I'm not that far out of training to not remember the **** we had to go through. So, far from it being short sighted or perpetuates anything I can now see it from both sides while most residents only see it from the resident spot. Furthermore, as much as people like to state abuses happen they're by far in the minority. Are there programs that abuse their residents? Sure. Are there programs that try to address resident complaints but the residents still complain anyway? Yes. So let's not be black and white here about claiming that abuses happen thereby every ****ty thing that happens in residency is somewhat associated with an "abusive" culture. Some residents are just lazy ****s and it's just so that there's more of them in the current millenial batch. And for abuses, there are certain recourses people can do to address abuses in their training programs ... see the USC cardiology dept. The current environment is such that any complaint/allegation of abuses will generally be looked at closely. My post addresses only those lazy entitled residents.
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I addressed the entitled residents in my post and I never said the majority of programs are abusive/majority of residents are abused, but even if the program isn't abusive, there are enough abusive docs out there that the abuses still happen and they remain a significant component of what you're complaining about.
 
getdown said:
Like I've said, I'm not that far out of training to not remember the **** we had to go through. So, far from it being short sighted or perpetuates anything I can now see it from both sides while most residents only see it from the resident spot. Furthermore, as much as people like to state abuses happen they're by far in the minority. Are there programs that abuse their residents? Sure. Are there programs that try to address resident complaints but the residents still complain anyway? Yes. So let's not be black and white here about claiming that abuses happen thereby every ****ty thing that happens in residency is somewhat associated with an "abusive" culture. Some residents are just lazy ****s and it's just so that there's more of them in the current millenial batch. And for abuses, there are certain recourses people can do to address abuses in their training programs ... see the USC cardiology dept. The current environment is such that any complaint/allegation of abuses will generally be looked at closely. My post addresses only those lazy entitled residents.
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This is in a medical student forum, no one is claiming that about residencies. The ones complaining are speaking about medschool
 
KeikoTanaka said:
Yeah, I think it was last month, so about 8 months in, I fully realized and came to the conclusion that my life was theirs. All my classmates complain about XYZ and I just sit there and smile. I've pledged a fraternity, I understand doing bull **** when you don't want to. Wasn't even allowed to talk to my friends at one point. Feels like the military except we're not in barracks waiting for our lieutenant to come in with a blowhorn at 3 am to wake us up to go on a 3 mile run. But basically its that.
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Having been in the military, this is accurate. I can actually play the game better now because I was in the military, where I had to learn things the hard way. Not being in a barracks, or having to do lame details, or live on a chow hall meal plan is very cash money.
 
Chibucks15 said:
That's what I don't understand about some people. They throw fits about everything, and sure some stuff gets changed, but part of what that's doing is making your name and face pretty well known (and usually not in a positive light, because most med students don't know how to not come off like they're throwing a tantrum). All it takes is a "doesn't do well with authority" or "doesn't work well in a team" to sink your residency app.

I agree with the fraternity pledging helping haha ya do what you gotta do while keeping quiet, then when you're free of repercussions then go back and throw a fit if you want to
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The real issue is throwing an entitled fit where you demonstrate absolutely no ability to consider anything other than your own thoughts. Sure, a lot of things are done "because that's how they've always been done" but a lot of things are done for legitimate reasons and people often love to start throwing fits without putting any effort into distinguishing which one they are dealing with. Admin at the school may have been there for decades whereas these students are often on campus for no more than 1-2 years when the bitching starts and with no attempts made to find out why the current process is the way it is.

I remember people in my class complaining about how our school's mandatory e-val system would send us all the e-vals for a course when the course completed. First year fall had courses that ran the entire semester with people lecturing for usually no more than 5 lectures the enitre year, so at the end of december you would get asked to evaluate someone who gave one lecture in early september and you would also have 2 weeks (most of which was vacation) to fill out just an absurd amount of evals. The school changed the system so that rather than getting them all at the end, as soon as the person's last lecture in the course happened, you would get sent their e-val and thus you had a steady trickle of evals to do throughout the semester with multiple overlapping 2 week windows to complete them. Come September the next year, the new 1st year class is complaining to admin that the school clearly doesn't value their time during courses because there is a constant stream of evals and they want the school to just wait until the end of the semester and e-mail them all at once then when classes are done. Literally never occurred to them that the system they proposed had been done before and was changed at students' request.
 
I’ve found that most students who complain about professionalism do so only after ending up on the wrong side of it. They don’t usually argue that their offending action was in fact professional; instead, they bemoan that they are in trouble for something that is not expressly against any rule but which they ultimately know is unprofessional.

The scope of unprofessional behavior is so broad that it isn’t simply too onerous to define all the potential violations. In fact, the very idea of professionalism is that it’s something aspired TO rather than a series of behaviors to avoid.

There are instances where schools abuse the term, but honestly Those are rare. Yes it’s unprofessional not to fill out required paperwork on time. Does anyone argue differently?

Want to gueas what lands more physicians in trouble: documentation and paperwork or poor medical decisions? Pull the record of adverse actions against medical license holders and see how many were for things like failing to renew or failing to submit adequate CME. This crap follows us forever and while the paperwork burden is high, it’s hard to argue that it isn’t something we should staying on top of.
 
DO2015CA said:
This is in a medical student forum, no one is claiming that about residencies. The ones complaining are speaking about medschool
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It holds true for medical school and with residency. What do you think happens to those med students after 4 years? They become residents. And that's my point. If you already have this attitude as a medical student how do you think it's going to change when they become residents? This is what I'm commenting on. The stakes become much higher as residents actually take care of people and their actions have very real consequences.
 
KeikoTanaka said:
I think what people don't realize is that by being told to do things you don't agree with, it's actually preparing you for life in the real world. There will be soooo many policies and things you don't want to follow or agree with. But you will follow them, or you will lose your job. They don't see it that way - They think this is just undergraduate 2.0. This is not. People forget that the moment you're accepted to medical school, you got the job! Congrats you're hired, you will be a Doctor. But now you have a 7-10 year training period, unlike the typical 2 week training period at a minimum wage job. And instead of going out and spending 100$ on the proper polo and khakis to wear to work, you're spending 400,000$ on the materials and knowledge. This isn't school, it's job training, so get used to it cuz that's what a real life job is going to be. You deal with a bunch of stuff you don't agree with. Now, that doesn't mean you don't try and work towards changing things you don't agree with... but you need to learn where to pick your battles, because you're not going to change everything.
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mistafab said:
Med school is considered “professional school.” Professionalism is an expectation - it is a vague term but you know it when you see it.
Unfortunately, many students just can’t seem to get it together. The hope is that if they make it through school, professionalism will be beaten into them during residency.
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Indeed! What medical students fail to get is that professionalism is very much like acting. When you put on that white coat, you go into character. And once you put on that coat, it sticks to you. You're 'on" all the time. That's why if you get into a drunken brawl with an Uber driver and it gets caught on video, you lose your job, despite the fact this was an off-work incident. Or you do anything like Eugene Gu did (look it up).


DO2015CA said:
I never had to visit the professionalism committee but I do agree schools use it as some boogieman. They will threaten it regardless if it was needed or not.
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Can't speak to other schools, but the Professionalism committee, or threats thereof, is a sword we pull out only when needed.

MSTPlease said:
The real issue is throwing an entitled fit where you demonstrate absolutely no ability to consider anything other than your own thoughts. Sure, a lot of things are done "because that's how they've always been done" but a lot of things are done for legitimate reasons and people often love to start throwing fits without putting any effort into distinguishing which one they are dealing with. Admin at the school may have been there for decades whereas these students are often on campus for no more than 1-2 years when the bitching starts and with no attempts made to find out why the current process is the way it is.

I remember people in my class complaining about how our school's mandatory e-val system would send us all the e-vals for a course when the course completed. First year fall had courses that ran the entire semester with people lecturing for usually no more than 5 lectures the enitre year, so at the end of december you would get asked to evaluate someone who gave one lecture in early september and you would also have 2 weeks (most of which was vacation) to fill out just an absurd amount of evals. The school changed the system so that rather than getting them all at the end, as soon as the person's last lecture in the course happened, you would get sent their e-val and thus you had a steady trickle of evals to do throughout the semester with multiple overlapping 2 week windows to complete them. Come September the next year, the new 1st year class is complaining to admin that the school clearly doesn't value their time during courses because there is a constant stream of evals and they want the school to just wait until the end of the semester and e-mail them all at once then when classes are done. Literally never occurred to them that the system they proposed had been done before and was changed at students' request.
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This story reminds me of one told to me by a dear friend who is on Faculty at IUSM. In her first year, she tough her subject in a compressed format...like over a two month period.

Her students complained bitterly at how little time there was to understand the material.

The next year, she stretched it out over an entire semester.

Those students complained bitterly at how long the course was!


getdown said:
It holds true for medical school and with residency. What do you think happens to those med students after 4 years? They become residents. And that's my point. If you already have this attitude as a medical student how do you think it's going to change when they become residents? This is what I'm commenting on. The stakes become much higher as residents actually take care of people and their actions have very real consequences.
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Yup. The problems about entitlement and work ethic described in this thread are resulting from for students for whom residency is their first employment ever. As such, they have poor job ethics...this doesn't mean they have a poor work ethic, they wouldn't have gotten into and through med school without one. But their entire adult lives have centered on school, not work. So they do things like leave exactly at 5 pm, or ask for vacation after two days on the job. We see this even in clinical rotations at times. Some of these kids don't understand the simple concept of "surgery rounds being at 6am. Thus, you show up at 6am."

This is why I think a year's employment (and not in mom and dad's business) should a requirement for med school.
The OP has mentioned bitterly in previous posts that professionalism is innate and can't be taught. I disagree. Professionalism is about deportment.

Hence, the first post doesn't surprise me, and I do worry about him/her being able to finish med school or residency.
 
The reason schools need “professionalism” is because med students, residents, and even attendings do really stupid things that look bad for the school/hospital. Things I have seen:

Med students stripping at a bar.
Residents having sex with minors.
Attendings having affairs with residents/students/scribes/nurses. Sometimes at work...
Lots of drug/alcohol problems like showing up to work drunk.

The list goes on and on. You kind of need an umbrella term because there is no limit of craziness that some people will try to achieve.
 
Tenk said:
The reason schools need “professionalism” is because med students, residents, and even attendings do really stupid things that look bad for the school/hospital. Things I have seen:

Med students stripping at a bar.
Residents having sex with minors.
Attendings having affairs with residents/students/scribes/nurses. Sometimes at work...
Lots of drug/alcohol problems like showing up to work drunk.

The list goes on and on. You kind of need an umbrella term because there is no limit of craziness that some people will try to achieve.
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I always laugh at the examples that are given in handbooks and stuff. Like we had one at one school I was at that said, “students shall not sell drugs out of their cars on school property”. Someone actually had to think that was okay for them to put it in there
 
getdown said:
entitled med student mindset
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How dare I be entitled to basic human decency

Tenk said:
Med students stripping at a bar.
Residents having sex with minors.
Attendings having affairs with residents/students/scribes/nurses. Sometimes at work...
Lots of drug/alcohol problems like showing up to work drunk.
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How about: don’t do anything illegal.

I’m not talking about the selling drugs out of your car. Those aren’t unprofessional, those are illegal.

Mass Effect said:
Professionalism is like pornography. Most people can't truly define it, but everyone knows it when they see it.
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Thank god our legal system doesn’t function this way

I guarantee every single one of you has done 5 unprofessional things regularly from the time you wake up to the time you finish driving to work. Unprofessional things aren’t “shooting up a block”. Dirt can be found if you go looking for it.

The hypocrisy behind it is the worst part. Faculty are pretentious and act so high and mighty are no different than the rest of us.
 
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In all honesty, would a medical student legally and professionally stripping at a bar be "unprofessional"? There are professional strippers who maintain high standards of stripping. What would be the repercussions
 
Chibucks15 said:
I always laugh at the examples that are given in handbooks and stuff. Like we had one at one school I was at that said, “students shall not sell drugs out of their cars on school property”. Someone actually had to think that was okay for them to put it in there
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tuition ain't going to pay for itself. must've happened at least once lol
 
KeikoTanaka said:
In all honesty, would a medical student legally and professionally stripping at a bar be "unprofessional"? There are professional strippers who maintain high standards of stripping. What would be the repercussions
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I have the strong suspicion that the medical students in question weren't doing it professionally.
 
Cassowary said:
How dare I be entitled to basic human decency



How about: don’t do anything illegal.

I’m not talking about the selling drugs out of your car. Those aren’t unprofessional, those are illegal.



Thank god our legal system doesn’t function this way

I guarantee every single one of you has done 5 unprofessional things regularly from the time you wake up to the time you finish driving to work. Unprofessional things aren’t “shooting up a block”. Dirt can be found if you go looking for it.

The hypocrisy behind it is the worst part. Faculty are pretentious and act so high and mighty are no different than the rest of us.
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lol
 
7331poas said:
meh, i mean I kind of agree with it. Im sure everyone does "unprofessional" things during their lives which they get away with purely because no one reports them. (locker room talk etc)
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Unprofessionalism, like someone said earlier, is vague and often you "know it when you see it", but by that logic, therefore professionalism changes depending on your audience. Just like any cultural shift, depending on who you're talking to, or where you are, various things will be appropriate. "Your momma jokes" aren't inherently unprofessional, especially in the "locker room", but very well may be when giving a large presentation at a conference.
 
it comes down to being stupid enough to be caught doing this stuff.

its not that administration cares about a medical student stripping. its that administration cares that someone else cares.

if you're called into the Dean's office 3 times for "unprofessional" things like "not mentioning you were skipping anatomy lab", "fighting with your implicit bias trainer that its nonsense", "saying you voted for trump on facebook..." The fact is you were the one called into the Dean's office 3 times and the other guy wasn't, it doesn't really matter that you had a good excuse each time...

And to be honest I don't know if this problem is just true to physicians. For a lot of contentious behaviors these days there are a thousand people willing to tattle to your boss, or harass them until you're fired and homeless. Its more a consequence of the way our culture has shifted, or perhaps, the way we've allowed for it to shift.
 
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I guarantee every single one of you has done 5 unprofessional things regularly from the time you wake up to the time you finish driving to work. Unprofessional things aren’t “shooting up a block”. Dirt can be found if you go looking for it.

The hypocrisy behind it is the worst part. Faculty are pretentious and act so high and mighty are no different than the rest of us.
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And yet, I bet if you made me pick the students in my class who got written up for professionalism violations I would have a specificity and sensitivity well above random. My specificity would probably be close to 100%. It's exceedingly rare for someone to disclose they have a violation and in your head you think "wow, of all the people, this person? Never would have guessed it."
 
MSTPlease said:
And yet, I bet if you made me pick the students in my class who got written up for professionalism violations I would have a specificity and sensitivity well above random. My specificity would probably be close to 100%. It's exceedingly rare for someone to disclose they have a violation and in your head you think "wow, of all the people, this person? Never would have guessed it."
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Truly disgusted by this sentiment from someone who is in the field of medicine, no less, to make such value judgments of a person. I don’t even know how you wrote that sentence without saying the word “stereotype.” Specificity and sensitivity LOL get out of here.

Oh wait, does your stereotyping behavior count as “unprofessional”?

Again I say, thank god our legal systems don’t work this way. Oh wait, they do, and black people disproportionately suffer.
 
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Cassowary said:
Truly disgusted by this sentiment from someone who is in the field of medicine, no less, to make such value judgments of a person. I don’t even know how you wrote that sentence without saying the word “stereotype.” Specificity and sensitivity LOL get out of here.

Oh wait, does your stereotyping behavior count as “unprofessional”?

Again I say, thank god our legal systems don’t work this way. Oh wait, they do, and black people disproportionately suffer.
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Man it must be exhausting to be this angry about everything all the time
 
Cassowary said:
Truly disgusted by this sentiment from someone who is in the field of medicine, no less, to make such value judgments of a person. I don’t even know how you wrote that sentence without saying the word “stereotype.” Specificity and sensitivity LOL get out of here.

Oh wait, does your stereotyping behavior count as “unprofessional”?

Again I say, thank god our legal systems don’t work this way. Oh wait, they do, and black people disproportionately suffer.
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Agreed. A society that functions on “you know it when you see it” is categorically unjust. It introduces an almost klan-like culture, one of “youre one of us or youre not”.
Gtfoh
 
Newyawk said:
Agreed. A society that functions on “you know it when you see it” is categorically unjust. It introduces an almost klan-like culture, one of “youre one of us or youre not”.
Gtfoh
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It isn’t that hard to avoid being “unprofessional”. If you’re having trouble that says more about you than it does the system. “The man” ain’t trying to put you down

Basically it just comes down to don’t be an ass and do what you’re supposed to do when you’re supposed to do it. I mean come on this isn’t complicated
 
KeikoTanaka said:
Unprofessionalism, like someone said earlier, is vague and often you "know it when you see it", but by that logic, therefore professionalism changes depending on your audience. Just like any cultural shift, depending on who you're talking to, or where you are, various things will be appropriate. "Your momma jokes" aren't inherently unprofessional, especially in the "locker room", but very well may be when giving a large presentation at a conference.
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Some things don't change depending on your audience. Take the neurology resident who attacked the Uber driver. The audience wouldn't matter. It's unprofessional, regardless of her not being at work at the time. There are some things that are just egregious no matter your job or your audience and will likely cause an employer to cut ties with you.

The more nuanced things are usually handled with more leeway, in my experience.
 
Newyawk said:
Agreed. A society that functions on “you know it when you see it” is categorically unjust. It introduces an almost klan-like culture, one of “youre one of us or youre not”.
Gtfoh
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Here's a visual aid for knowing it when you see it. This girl was terminated from residency.

 
getdown said:
Go ahead and explain to me how expecting certain professional behavior, dedication to your craft and respect of established hierarchy to be depriving you of basic human decency.
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Go back to my original post. What I'm trying to get at is that because of the LOOSE definitions of the word professionalism, it can be (and HAS BEEN) used by faculty to intimidate and hurt students that they simply dislike, seek retaliation, or want to make examples out of.
 
Cassowary said:
Go back to my original post. What I'm trying to get at is that because of the LOOSE definitions of the word professionalism, it can be (and HAS BEEN) used by faculty to intimidate and hurt students that they simply dislike, seek retaliation, or want to make examples out of.
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Fine. I'll give you that the word can be considered "vague" and allows for open interpretation. However, as many have said before, there is no way that anybody could list out EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE INFRACTION that could fall under the professionalism umbrella. You'd literally have to have a separate dictionary of possibilities to do that. Is there potential for abuse as you said earlier? Possibly. But it makes people think twice before doing something pretty stupid if they knew they would get in trouble. And even then, the majority of students don't ever run into these types of issues. And I still don't see how any of this is denying you your basic human decency.
 
getdown said:
Fine. I'll give you that the word can be considered "vague" and allows for open interpretation. However, as many have said before, there is no way that anybody could list out EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE INFRACTION that could fall under the professionalism umbrella. You'd literally have to have a separate dictionary of possibilities to do that. Is there potential for abuse as you said earlier? Possibly. But it makes people think twice before doing something pretty stupid if they knew they would get in trouble. And even then, the majority of students don't ever run into these types of issues. And I still don't see how any of this is denying you your basic human decency.
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Ok, that leaves the minority of cases which are more vague, that have occurred to some of my classmates recently which seem absolutely ridiculous. Unfortunately I can’t say details since it would be unfair to them and they are not my stories to tell.

But I’ll give a somewhat parallel example. Two male students go to an olive garden and have discussion that is sexually charged and they exchange some controversial opinions. A female peer happens to be at the same olive garden sitting behind them and eavesdrops on the conversation. She files a professionalism report, and that gets added to their file. It’s too much imo.
 
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Cassowary said:
How dare I be entitled to basic human decency



How about: don’t do anything illegal.

I’m not talking about the selling drugs out of your car. Those aren’t unprofessional, those are illegal.



Thank god our legal system doesn’t function this way

I guarantee every single one of you has done 5 unprofessional things regularly from the time you wake up to the time you finish driving to work. Unprofessional things aren’t “shooting up a block”. Dirt can be found if you go looking for it.

The hypocrisy behind it is the worst part. Faculty are pretentious and act so high and mighty are no different than the rest of us.
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Stripping, alcohol, and having sex with adults is all legal... it’s when you place yourself in a bad situation doing it that it becomes a professionalism issue. Dunno why you’re so upset about this. Doctors are held to a higher standard than the general public just like celebrities and politicians. We also make a ton more money and have a lot more authority. Trade offs.
 
Cassowary said:
But I’ll give a somewhat parallel example. Two male students go to an olive garden and have discussion that is sexually charged and they exchange some controversial opinions. A female peer happens to be at the same olive garden sitting behind them and eavesdrops on the conversation. She files a professionalism report, and that gets added to their file. It’s too much imo.
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If you think for one second that that is a problem only for medical students, you need to spend some time in the real world. That example can and has gotten people fired from jobs. It is not right and it is not fair, but it is reality and one that exists outside of the world of medicine.
 
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