Fostering Professionalism: Challenges and Opportunities is the title of a dissemination conference co-sponsored by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) to be held in Rosemont, Illinois, on September 18-19, 2003. This conference aims to help medical educators and credentialers involved in teaching and assessing professionalism through medical school, residency training, and professional practice: 1) understand how their own values act as a framework for teaching and assessing professionalism; 2) identify behaviors associated with professionalism; 3) analyze potential tools for assessing professional behaviors; 4) propose new models for medical education to transmit professional values; 5) recognize how advancing professionalism will improve patient care. The physicians' contract with society calls for the delivery of safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable health care. Increasing health care delivery, however, threaten to seriously erode physicians' professionalism as they strive to meet their obligations. Reaffirmation of the principles of professionalism by physicians is thus critical for practice today. The ACGME through its accreditation of residency programs and the ABMS through its Maintenance of Certification initiative require assessment of professionalism. Growing interest and work in the field of professionalism makes it necessary and timely to conduct a dissemination conference targeting those responsible for training and credentialing. The use of valid and reliable tools to assess professionalism will lead to renewed commitment to honor medicine's responsibilities to patients and to society and thus to improve patient care. The joint efforts of the ACGME and ABMS to improve professionalism assures that the presentations and results of this conference should have a significant and long-term impact on most physicians and on all AHRQ priority populations since virtually all allopathic residents train in ACGME-approved programs and at least one of the 24 ABMS Member Boards certifies more than 85% of licensed U.S. physicians.
