Medical students’ experiences and perspective on unprofessional behavior in clinical practice

Introduction: Recognition of professional and unprofessionalbehaviors is the most important and fundamental factor whichaffects the relationships between the doctors and patients.Therefore, in order to progress in their professional life, doctorsare supposed to understand and follow these behaviors.Methods: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive analytical study.All students in teaching hospital of Shiraz University of MedicalSciences were eligible to participate (374 individuals with censusmethod). The data were collected using a questionnaire containing29 questions about the concept of medical professionalism. Here,participation of medical students in unprofessional behaviorsand the relevance of this participation with the perception ofthese behaviors were considered. Data were analyzed throughSPSS version 15, using descriptive statistics, t-test and Pearsoncorrelation test.Results: According to the obtained data, despite the fact thatall students (140 students in the junior and 234 in the senioryears as interns) had passed the course of professionalism(95.7%), the perception of unprofessional behaviors between thetwo groups was significantly different (p<0.001) and the meanof the perception among junior students was higher than theinterns. No significant difference was observed in participationin unprofessional behavior rates of the two groups (p=0.451).Moreover, the data did not reveal a strong relationship betweenparticipation in unprofessional behavior and what is taught in thecurriculum (p=0.079).Conclusion: Medical students’ perception of unprofessionalbehaviors as acceptable may increase their participation inthese behaviors. Thus, medical policy makers should considerapproaches beyond simply providing ethical and professionalguidelines or policies, and students should be regularly evaluatedfor their activities; their professional behaviors should be evaluatedin order to temper them, when appropriate.Keywords: Professional; Behavior; Perception, Teaching; Hospital, Medical student, Clinical medicine