SPECIAL ARTICLE Teaching and Assessing Professionalism in Ophthalmology Residency Training Programs Andrew G. Lee, MD, 1,2 Hilary A. Beaver, MD, 1 H. Culver Boldt, MD, 1 Richard Olson, MD, 1 Thomas A. Oetting, MS, MD, 1,4 Michael Abramoff, MD, PhD, 1 and Keith Carter, MD 1,3 1 Department of Ophthalmology; 2 Neurology and Neurosurgery; 3 Otolaryngology, at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics, Iowa City, Iowa; and 4 Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Iowa City, Iowa, USA Abstract. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has mandated that all residency training programs teach and assess new competencies including professionalism. This article reviews the literature on medical professionalism, describes good practices gleaned from published works, and proposes an implementation matrix of specific tools for teaching and assessing professionalism in ophthalmology residency. Professionalism requirements have been defined by the ACGME, subspecialty organizations, and other certifying and credentialing organizations. Teaching, role modeling, and assessing the competency of professionalism are important tasks in managing the ACGME mandate. Future work should focus on the field testing of tools for validity, reliability, feasibility, and cost-effectiveness. (Surv Ophthalmol 52:300--314, 2007. Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.) Key words. ACGME  competency  professionalism  resident training The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has mandated that all residency programs ‘‘teach and assess’’ six general competen- cies. One of these competencies is professionalism (ACGME Outcome project. Available from www.acg- me.org/outcome/comp/compFull.asp [accessed on 13 February 2006]). 59 The concept of professionalism in medicine is an ancient and revered one and we can all perhaps recall professing the ‘‘Hippocratic oath’’ (or some version of the oath) at our own medical school graduation ceremonies. These professional values have as much importance and relevance in the modern era as they did for Hippocrates 2,500 years ago. In fact, it is by design that the competency of professionalism was incorporated directly and prom- inently into the original ACGME mandate. Lynch et al in 2002 previously reviewed the assessment of professionalism. 9 In this article we review the literature on medical professionalism, update and apply the results from the Lynch review for residency training in ophthalmology, glean ‘‘good practices’’ from published works, and propose an implementa- tion matrix, including specific tools for teaching and assessing professionalism in ophthalmology residency. Methods A PubMed literature search (limited to ‘‘English language’’ from 1966 to 2005) was performed using the search terms: professionalism and assessment. Titles were reviewed for topicality by a content expert (AGL) and selected abstracts were then reviewed in more detail. Individual full papers were obtained in 300 Ó 2007 by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 0039-6257/07/$--see front matter doi:10.1016/j.survophthal.2007.02.003 SURVEY OF OPHTHALMOLOGY VOLUME 52  NUMBER 3  MAY–JUNE 2007