Introduction According to the unwritten "societal contract" between the medical profession and the society, societal expectations of the medical profession include acquisition and maintenance of professional competence and skills throughout their career as well as professional values such as honesty, integrity, high moral standards, accountability and an altruistic behaviour. 1 However, unethical and unprofessional conduct among physicians has been reported in literature. 2,3 In one report, 61% final year medical students reported unethical behaviour by their teachers. 3 Another study with second year medical residents regarding unethical behaviour showed falsification of patient records and mistreatment of patients during the first year of residency. 2 Therefore, there is a need to improve the professional behaviour of doctors in order to regain trust in the society. As a result, most accreditation bodies as well as medical associations throughout the developed world have come up with their own documents on professionalism. These include "A Physician's Charter" by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the European Federation of Internal Medicine (EFIM) and "Medical Professionalism in a Changing World" by the Royal College of Physicians, London. 4,5 Teaching and assessment of professionalism have found a place among the essential competencies of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS). 6,7 Incorporation of professionalism in Global Minimum Essential Requirements (GMER) illustrates the importance of this domain for doctors all over the world. 8 However, the situation is different in many developing countries where professionalism is neither taught nor assessed at undergraduate or postgraduate levels. 9 Vol. 65, No. 7, July 2015 721 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Feasibility, relevance and effectiveness of teaching and assessment of ethical status and communication skills as attributes of professionalism Abid Jameel, 1 Sahibzada Mahmood Noor, 2 Shahid Ayub, 3 Sobia Sabir Ali, 4 Yoon Soo Park, 5 AraTekian 6 Abstract Objective: To examine the feasibility and effectiveness of teaching and assessing professionalism in a developing country. Methods: The pre-intervention and post-intervention study was conducted from January to August 2012 and comprised 7 workshops of three days each that were held at four teaching hospitals of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. Overall, there were 10 Objective Structured Clinical Examination stations and 10 written scenarios. After the pre-test, workshop was held on various aspects of professionalism which was considered 'intervention', and it was followed by a post-test similar to the pre-test at the end of day 3. Stata 12 was used for all statistical analyses. Results: There were 136 postgraduate residents in the study.The correlation between Objective Structured Clinical Examination stations and written exam for pre-test was 0.42 (p<0.001), while for post-test the correlation was 0.17(p=0.046). Correlation between pre-test written and post-test Objective Structured Clinical Examination stations was 0.23 (p=0.001), but the correlation between pre-test Objective Structured Clinical Examination stations and post-test written was not significant (p>0.05).The standardised effect size for the adjusted regression was 0.37 for both comparisons (p<0.001).Mean pre-test scores were 38.13+/-13.13% vs. 76.50+/-14.4%for the post-test score (p<0.001). Conclusion: Although post-test scores increased significantly both for the Objective Structured Clinical Examination stations and the written scenarios, the former has shown a higher reliability compared to the written test. Furthermore, teaching and assessment of professionalism was found relevant, effective and feasible in resource- constrained countries. Teaching and assessment of professionalism has become globally relevant and is recommended to be included in the curricula of medical institutions. Keywords: Professionalism, Physician-patient relationship, Professional development, Postgraduate training, Curriculum development, OSCE, Pakistan, Developing countries. (JPMA 65: 721; 2015) 1-4 Department of Medical Education, Postgraduate Medical Institute, Hayatabad, Peshawar, Pakistan, 5,6 Department of Medical Education, UniversityofIllinoisatChicago,USA. Correspondence: AbidJameel.Email:ajameel99@yahoo.com