title: Assessing professional behaviour: Overcoming teachers' reluctance to fail students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Developing professional behaviour is an important goal of medical education in which teachers play a significant part. Many teachers can be reluctant to fail students demonstrating unprofessional behaviour. We hypothesize that supporting teachers in teaching and assessing professional behaviour and involving them in remediation will reduce this reluctance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In 2010, VUmc School of Medical Sciences Amsterdam introduced an educational theme on professional behaviour for the bachelor's and master's programmes in medicine with a special emphasis on supporting teachers in teaching and assessing professional behaviour and involving them in the remediation process. Information was extracted from the student database on the number of unprofessional behaviour judgments awarded over 2008-2010 (before the intervention), and 2010-2013 (after introducing the intervention), which was compared. To find out if teachers' reluctance to fail had decreased, qualitative feedback from the teachers was gathered and analysed. Since the implementation of the educational theme, the number of unprofessional behaviour judgments has risen. The teachers are positive about the implemented system of teaching and assessing professional behaviour, and feel less reluctant to award an unsatisfactory professional behaviour judgment.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Supporting teachers in teaching and assessing professional behaviour and involving them in students' remediation appears to reduce their reluctance to fail students demonstrating unprofessional behaviour.
authors.affiliation: VUmc School of Medical Sciences, P,O, box 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, the Netherlands. m.mak@vumc.nl.
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mak-van der Vossen
authors.forename: Saskia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Peerdeman
authors.forename: Walther
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: van Mook
authors.forename: Gerda
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Croiset
authors.forename: Rashmi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kusurkar
mesh_terms: D004500:Education, Graduate / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D005178:Faculty; D006801:Humans; D013334:Students; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards