Developing professionalism in health professional learners Richard Hays and Gary Hamlin, Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine, Bond University, Queensland, Australia Roger Worthington, Keele University, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, UK As a member of the clinical teaching team, you receive an email from the Dean, exhorting all faculty members to attend a teacher training workshop on teaching professionalism. Before attending the meeting, here are 10 reflective questions you may want to consider: •Why me? All teachers, particularly the clinicians that provide all of the clinical supervision in medical education, have an important role in teaching professionalism. Regardless of what may be formally taught in lectures, seminars and tutorials, medical students and postgraduate trainees are heavily influenced by what they observe in the workplace. Whereas most clinicians will demonstrate sound professional and ethical behaviours, there is evidence that most learners in medical education will observe lapses in professionalism in their supervisors similar to those that they are taught to avoid. 1 This is often unconscious, but proves that all clinical teachers should participate in training that increases awareness of the professionalism component of the curriculum as well as their own understanding of what may be inappropriate. As the patient voice becomes better informed and louder, the professionalism of all clinicians faces greater scrutiny. •What problem is the focus on teaching professionalism intended to address? Evidence is emerging to the effect that medical students who demonstrate potentially poor behaviours could be more likely to feature in problems presenting to medical boards many years later. 2 Furthermore, a very small number of truly terrible doctors have been able to hide and continue dangerous behaviours. 3,4 Health care regulators, health providers and patients now expect medical education to develop good professionalism in the majority, and to weed out the few with poor professionalism. Medical schools Points to ponder 64 Ó Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2013. THE CLINICAL TEACHER 2013; 10: 64–66