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

INTRODUCTION: Recognition of professional and unprofessional behaviors is the most important and fundamental factor which affects the relationships between the doctors and patients. Therefore, in order to progress in their professional life, doctors are 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 Medical Sciences were eligible to participate (374 individuals with census method). The data were collected using a questionnaire containing 29 questions about the concept of medical professionalism. Here, participation of medical students in unprofessional behaviors and the relevance of this participation with the perception of these behaviors were considered. Data were analyzed through SPSS version 15, using descriptive statistics, t-test and Pearson correlation test. RESULTS: According to the obtained data, despite the fact that all students (140 students in the junior and 234 in the senior years as interns) had passed the course of professionalism (95.7%), the perception of unprofessional behaviors between the two groups was significantly different (p<0.001) and the mean of the perception among junior students was higher than the interns. No significant difference was observed in participation in unprofessional behavior rates of the two groups (p=0.451).Moreover, the data did not reveal a strong relationship between participation in unprofessional behavior and what is taught in the curriculum (p=0.079). CONCLUSION: Medical students' perception of unprofessional behaviors as acceptable may increase their participation in these behaviors. Thus, medical policy makers should consider approaches beyond simply providing ethical and professional guidelines or policies, and students should be regularly evaluated for their activities; their professional behaviors should be evaluated in order to temper them, when appropriate.