title: Defining fitness and aptitude to practice medicine.
abstract: This article describes the use of the critical incident technique to define noncognitive behaviours, referred to as 'fitness and aptitude', that physicians should demonstrate in their practice. A total of 484 behaviours were categorized under four categories: attitude and personal attributes; communication; practice organization; and professional competence. Each category was further subdivided into subcategories. The communication category was by far the largest, representing 46% of all behaviours. The behaviours were written as objectives so that they could be included in a medical school curriculum and evaluated with much less subjectivity.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
authors.forename: D B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Holmes
authors.forename: K V
authors.initials: KV
authors.lastname: Mann
authors.forename: B K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Hennen
mesh_terms: D001076:Aptitude; D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D010551:Personality; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires