Health Science Students’ Perspective on Quality-of-Care-Relating Medical Professionalism

PURPOSE: Health science students need to be professional to improve quality of care (QOC) in the current Vietnamese healthcare system. Therefore, we aim to evaluate medicine and traditional medicine (TM) students’ perception of the professional attributes relating to QOC for improving inter-disciplined professionalism training that promotes QOC in Vietnam. METHODS: The cross-sectional study was carried on 2039 students of 6 years at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City (HUMP) from the medical and TM faculty in March, 2021. The Vietnamese American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) questionnaire (2011) was used as the survey instrument. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to confirm the validity of the scale in TM students. Mean, Min–Max, standard deviation and sample paired t-test were performed for Likert scale. The one-way ANOVA was used for inferential statistics. RESULTS: The CFA demonstrated the validity of the Vietnamese questionnaire in measuring 4 QOC-relating professional attributes, previously found in medical students for TM students. In both faculties and across academic years, students perceived self-awareness and ensuring QOC as the leading important attribute, while social duty and professional habit as the least important attribute. Contrasting with preclinical phase, students’ perception did not differ significantly between the two faculties in their clinical years (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: TM students share universal QOC-relating professional traits with medical students. Moreover, exposure to clinical environment might increase inter-disciplined agreement on importance of these attributes. However, health sciences students’ underestimation of social duty and professional habit persists throughout 6 academic years. Hidden curriculum in clinical training such as specialist-centeredness might hinder the students’ improvement in perception of these traits. Therefore, these traits should strongly be emphasized in professionalism training to decrease the effects of hidden curriculum on them.