How to answer “What does professionalism mean to you?” in a medical school interview

A strong answer to "what does professionalism mean to you" gives a short working definition, names two or three of its parts, and shows one of them in action through an experience of your own. Interviewers want to hear that you understand professionalism as conduct that protects patients and colleagues, and that you've seen what it costs to maintain.

What the interviewer is assessing

• Professionalism and integrity
• Self-reflection and growth

Medical schools, licensing bodies and residency programs in both the US and Canada treat professionalism as a competency they assess, alongside knowledge and clinical skill. Schools screen for it at the interview because unprofessional behavior in medical school has been linked to disciplinary action by regulators later in a physician's career. The interviewer listens for whether your definition includes the parts that matter in practice. Those are honesty with patients and colleagues, reliability, confidentiality, respect for people you disagree with, accountability for your mistakes, and equal care for every patient whatever you think of them.

They also listen for an example, because a definition with no instance behind it is a list of words. In a panel interview, this question often comes beside one about a time you behaved unprofessionally or saw somebody else do so, and the panel checks the two answers against each other. In an MMI, professionalism is rarely asked as a definition and more often tested inside a scenario, such as a colleague who arrives impaired or a friend who asks you to look up a relative's chart.

How to structure your answer

1. Give your definition in one or two sentences, centered on how a physician's conduct protects patients and earns their trust.
2. Name two or three parts of that definition, such as honesty, reliability, confidentiality or accountability, and say in a sentence why each one matters to a patient.
3. Describe one experience where you acted on one of those parts, or watched somebody else act on it, and say what the behavior cost or protected.
4. Acknowledge that professionalism includes conduct nobody sees, such as how you speak about patients when they aren't in the room.
5. Close with the part of professionalism you expect to find hardest, and what you'll do about it.

Choose an experience from a workplace, a volunteer role or a team, where your conduct affected somebody who depended on you. Shadowing can supply an example of a physician's professionalism, as long as you say what you learned from watching rather than claiming the behavior as your own. The practice box gives you three minutes: give the definition in the first 20 seconds and keep the list of parts to three.

Common mistakes

• Defining professionalism as punctuality and dress describes the visible part and leaves out the conduct that protects patients.
• Reciting a list of eight virtues with no example gives the panel words they could have read in a code of conduct.
• Claiming you've never acted unprofessionally invites the panel to ask about a time you did, with no story ready.
• Describing professionalism only as how a physician appears to patients misses the half of it that happens with colleagues and in private.
• Taking a position you can't hold under questioning, such as saying a professional never shows emotion, sets up a follow-up that undoes the answer.

Follow-up questions to prepare for

• Can you tell me about a time you saw a professional behave unprofessionally, and what did you do?
• Is it unprofessional for a physician to post about their work on social media?
• What would you do if a classmate asked you to sign them in to a mandatory session they'd skipped?
• Which part of professionalism do you expect to find hardest to maintain when you're exhausted?
• Can a physician be professional and still disagree openly with a hospital policy?