title: Professionalism in physicians in a second-level hospital
abstract: It takes many years to acquire abilities and technical skills necessary to do a good work as a doctor and even more years, for being "good professionals". Much of this training is based on old teaching schemes, but medicine has changed. So far no studies in our medium addressing the problem are known. The aim of this paper was to determine the level of professionalism in physicians that work in a second-level hospital.
  
  
  
  Descriptive cross-sectional study. We apply a survey to physicians, residents and medical interns in a second-level hospital. We developed and implemented a questionnaire on professionalism, which contained 18 items, 3 demographic questions and 15 questions with a Likert scale, which identified four dimensions: specialized knowledge, autonomy in decision-making, self-regulation and social commitment. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used, considering significant a p-value <0.05.
  
  
  
  We surveyed 228 physicians, 57.5% demonstrated competence in professionalism. 93.3% of the participants were competent in specialized knowledge and 60.5% in social commitment. The physicians and residents got the higher scores, and these differences were significant between autonomy in decision-making and specialized knowledge (p < 0.001). The medical interns obtained lower scores in all dimensions compared with residents and physicians.
  
  
  
  More than a half of physicians surveyed had a competent level of professionalism but only in some dimensions. We observed higher scores with a higher academic grade.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Terapia Intensiva, Hospital Civil Nuevo de Guadalajara "Dr. Juan I. Menchaca", Guadalajara, Jalisco, México. ramiroesparza.md@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Sergio Emilio
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Prieto-Miranda
authors.forename: Carlos Alberto
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Jiménez-Bernardino
authors.forename: Elizabeth Guadalupe
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Monjaraz-Guzmán
authors.forename: Ramiro Israel
authors.initials: RI
authors.lastname: Esparza-Pérez
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008800:Mexico; D010820:Physicians / Q000941:ethics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017009:Professional Autonomy; D000068616:Professionalism; D063728:Secondary Care Centers; D012941:Social Responsibility; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Knowledge; Medical ethics; Professional autonomy; Professionalism