Emergency Medicine Directors’ Perceptions on Professionalism: A Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors Survey

ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE 2011; 18:S97–S103 © 2011 by the Society for Academic Emergency MedicineAbstractObjectives:  The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires residency training programs to teach and assess professionalism in residents; however, programs may struggle to successfully remediate residents not meeting professionalism standards. To assist programs with this complex issue, a Professionalism Remediation Task Force was formed by the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD‐EM), which surveyed program directors (PDs) concerning their experiences. The purpose of this study is to report survey results regarding the identification and rating of unprofessional behaviors and challenges in the evaluation and remediation of professionalism.Methods:  In June 2010, the task force sent an anonymous survey via the CORD‐EM listserv to PDs with active EM programs.Results:  Fifty percent (77/154) of eligible PDs responded to the survey. Most PDs rated the unprofessional behaviors of interpersonal/communication conflicts, lack of responsibility during patient care, lack of respect of coworkers, and reports of impairment as “critical”; repeated tar