Professionalism: Moving towards a 360° anatomy education
Authors: Wilson Timothy D. , Linkeš Snježana , Ezekiel Rick D. 
Published: June 2021

Context

Higher education, in particular graduate education, is undergoing expansion in multiple dimensions. On one hand the need to specialize and carve one's research niche remains a required primary focus of many research intensive institutions. Concurrently however, the ability of these institutions to host newly minted doctoral students as de novo faculty is stagnant. This paradoxical squeeze has forced students, supervisors, and institutions to garner resources to look beyond the classical pathways to success for graduates. One of the primary methods by which student career focus is broadened is through graduate programs that validate, value, and develop skills of professionalism. By expanding student competencies beyond their tacit laboratory skills, students explore alternate career paths, heighten their presence in their immediate fields of research, find a greater sense of satisfaction, and less apprehension as they complete their studies.

But how is professionalism achieved? Often, the scope and context of many professional comportments fall outside the skill set of supervisors and graduate program requirements leaving students to fend for themselves. The current study explores student attitudes surrounding some aspects of professionalism as they attend a required class within an anatomical program where none of the outcomes are anatomically related. Instead, the class explores topics of grantspersonship, writing for success, reading critically, debating powerfully, and giving great presentations. One important aspect of the course is a 6‐week module in collaboration with the institution's Student Success Centre (SSC). In this module, career counsellors lead the class without professor present enabling robust and candid discussions about the students' next steps.

Results

Over the past 4 years MSc students (n=31) in the Clinical Anatomy program gave informed consent to study their responses to multiple reaction evaluations to professionalism activities during their time with SSC counsellors. Through surveys inspecting attitudes before and after professionalism activities, significant and positive enhancements in attitude were discovered. We found that four of six attitudes were positively influenced. These include Career Optimism (p<0.05), Need for Career Information (p<0.01), Networking (p<0.01), and Interview Anxiety (p<0.01). Two of the components of the reaction evaluation were not significantly influenced, Career Exploration (p=0.328) and Personality Inspection (p=0.183).

Next Steps

The results demonstrate how through ancillary but important tweaks to student outcomes in a anatomical curriculum, major changes in attitude can be achieved. Whether the measured changes in attitude translate into behavioural changes that affect career trajectory and success is yet to be determined. The next step in this research will be to conduct post‐graduate surveys in order to determine if and how these career professionalism formation activities translated into better career manifestations of success. Longer term goals will explore how program specific courses in professionalism dovetail effectively with institutionally‐driven endeavours to serve the needs of students in the fast‐changing landscape of future careers.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.