Medical Professionalism's themes from the viewpoint of general population: A qualitative study

Abstract

Medical professionalism, which is of great interest in most countries, underpins the relationship between patients and doctors. The concepts of medical professionalism should be understandable not only by physicians but also by patients. However, there are few studies that evaluate the concept of medical professionalism from patients' perspective.
a) We conducted two focus group interviews with 12 people who were not health care professionals. One interview was done with people who were living in Tokyo and one with people living in Osaka. Each interview was one hour long. During the interviews, we explored themes related to medical professionalism from patients' perspectives.
b) We qualitatively analyzed response data from audio records of the interview and inductively extracted categories pertaining to medical professionalism. We compared our findings with the domains of the American Board of Internal Medicine's Charter on Professionalism (CP).
c) We found 5 themes; 1) Primacy of patient welfare 2) Fairness 3) Social responsibility 4) Maintaining appropriate relations with industry 5) Maintaining appropriate relations with patients.
d) Although our themes are almost equivalent to the principles cited in CP, there are some differences, such as the importance of maintaining appropriate relations with patients.
e) Given the current findings, medical educators and trainers should continue to develop the Japanese concepts of medical professionalism in a manner that takes into consideration patients' perspectives.