Professionalism Mini-Evaluation Exercise in Finland: a preliminary investigation introducing the Finnish version of the P-MEX instrument

Abstract

Introduction: Teaching medical professionalism is increasinglyacknowledged as an important aspect of medical education.The Professionalism Mini-Evaluation Exercise (P-MEX) is anassessment tool for evaluating medical professionalism, butno studies using it as a self-assessment instrument have beenreported. This paper reports on a preliminary investigation of theFinnish version of the P-MEX instrument as an assessment andself-assessment measure.Methods: The sample in the present cross-sectional studycomprised all 23 medical students and recent graduates (15 femalesand 8 males) participating in a summer school of psychiatryprogram in 2014. The two-month program combines clinicalwork with multifaceted teaching and intensive tutoring. At theend of the program, the participants’ medical professionalism wasassessed by the tutors and other members of the work communityas well as the students themselves using the Finnish version of theP-MEX instrument. The P-MEX scores were compared, using theFriedman test.Results: The mean values and SD for the P-MEX assessmentswere as follows: tutor assessment 3.26±0.21, work communityassessment 3.23±0.26 and self-assessment 3.01±0.07. Nosignificant gender differences were observed. The tutor and workcommunity assessments were significantly correlated (r=0.573,p=0.040), but the self-assessment scores did not correlate witheither of the other assessments. Overall, the students evaluatedtheir skills significantly poorer in comparison to the otherassessments.Conclusion: Although the small sample size limits thegeneralization of these preliminary results, the Finnish versionof the P-MEX instrument appears to be a feasible measure ofmedical professionalism. The instrument can also be used as aself-assessment instrument, but subjective evaluations should becomplemented with external assessments or feedback in order totake individual and cultural aspects into account.Keywords: Assessment; Medical students; Professionalism