Professional Understanding Research Articles

Professionalism Policies and Practices as Experienced by First-Generation Medical Students, Residents, and Physicians

Phenomenon : While professionalism is largely understood to be complex and dynamic, it is oftentimes implemented as if it were static and concrete. As a result, policies and practices reflect dominant historical norms of the medical profession, which can cause tension for trainees from marginalized groups. One such group comprises those who identify as first-generation physicians - those whose parents have not earned an associate’s degree or higher. This group is highly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status; however, their experiences with institutional professionalism policies and practices has not yet been fully explored. In this study, our aims were to understand the ways in which these participants experience professionalism, and to inform how professionalism can be more inclusively conceptualized. Approach : In November 2022-March 2023, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 first-generation medical students, residents, and physicians and analyzed select national and institutional professionalism policies in relation to key themes identified in the interviews. The interviews were designed to elicit participants’ experiences with professionalism and where they experienced tension and challenges because of their first-gen identity. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis through a critical perspective, focused on identifying tensions because of systemic and historical factors. Findings : Participants described the ways in which they experienced tension between what was written, enacted, desirable, and possible around the following elements of professionalism: physical appearance; attendance and leaves of absence; and patient care. They described a deep connection to patient care but that this joy is often overshadowed by other elements of professionalism as well as healthcare system barriers. They also shared the ways in which they wish to contribute to changing how their institutions conceptualize professionalism. Insights : Given their unique paths to and through medicine and their marginalized status in medicine, first-generation interviewees provided a necessary lens for viewing the concept of professionalism that has been largely absent in medicine. These findings contribute to our understanding of professionalism conceptually, but also practically. As professionalism evolves, it is important for institutions to translate professionalism’s complexity into educational practice as well as to involve diverse voices in refining professionalism definitions and policies.

Thinking with Keywords: Investigating the Role and Nature of Professionalism Keywords in TPC Enculturation

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of TPC professionalism keywords on early career scholars’ disciplinary enculturation. The article reports on a collaboration between the article’s authors that explored how the deployment of professionalism keywords in teaching and research created conditions for defining what it might mean to work as a TPC professional. The article offers insights into the challenges keywords pose to forwarding non-normative understandings of professionalism that enable broader inclusion and visibility for TPC stakeholders.

Double-edged sword of knowledge inertia: Overcoming healthcare professionals’ resistance in innovation adoption

Healthcare professionals' adoption of innovations is crucial for the success and positive impact of innovations. Realizing the important role of knowledge inertia, this research, adopting social exchange perspectives, investigates its impact at the individual level among healthcare professionals and reveals the mechanisms either mitigating or deteriorating its impact on professionals' adoption of innovations. A survey study involving 337 clinical physicians from two specialized and three comprehensive hospitals reveals a negative impact of learning inertia but a positive impact of experience inertia on their intention to adopt innovations. Perceived organizational support mitigates the positive impact of experience inertia and knowledge potential mitigates the impact of both dimensions of knowledge inertia. By focusing on professionals’ knowledge inertia, we have revealed the distinctive effects and the mechanisms that leverage or mitigate these effects, deepening the understanding of professionals and innovation adoption.

Don’t Stand Up in a Hammock

This ethnographic case study investigates the professional, locational and cultural understandings teachers need when beginning regional, rural, and remote teaching and living. Drawing from the experiences of recently graduated early career teachers in regional, rural, and remote teaching positions, the study sought to identify key learnings and strategies for surviving and thriving in regional, rural, and remote communities with the aim of better preparing pre-service teachers for placements and future employment in these locations. Most early career teachers in this study would recommend regional, rural, and remote teaching positions to pre-service teachers, describing the experience as rewarding, challenging and professionally developing. The importance of building relationships and immersing oneself in community were salient in the data. Analysis revealed a need for pre-determinations in five areas when preparing for RRR teaching positions: social (building networks and making friends), geographical (exploring the local area and getting involved in community), emotional (positive mindset and getting out of your comfort zone), personal (healthy habits and resilience), and cultural (understanding community). There is an evident opportunity to help pre-service teachers prepare for regional, rural, and remote experiences by considering these five pre-determinations.

Exploring the understanding of healthcare professionalism and perceived barriers and enablers towards the display of professionalism: a qualitative study

Background Professionalism plays an integral part in healthcare. The range of definitions and domains of professionalism reflects its complexity and in Singapore, professionalism is codified by the Singapore Medical Council ethical code and ethical guidelines. Many have studied professionalism using a priori frameworks, but none used phenomenological studies to explore professionalism through the perception and lived experiences of healthcare professionals themselves. In addition, few have explored factors that hinder or promote professionalism in an Asian setting. These valuable insights help support the growth and development of programs on professionalism and guide us in changing and making policies. Methods Through semi-structured interviews, views and experiences of healthcare professionals towards professionalism in a single healthcare cluster were explored. Specifically, the perception of professionalism and perceived barriers and enablers were examined. Results Our study found that healthcare professionals largely share the same understanding of professionalism, encompassing conduct, communication, competency, collaboration, and image. Notably, some facets such as the importance of attire and inter-professional collaboration were emphasized more strongly by certain healthcare groups. Conclusions Healthcare professionals see high workload and stress as barriers while factors such as having the right qualities coupled with the support from mentors and team as enablers in the display of professionalism.

The stealth rise of control: Forgotten trust in contemporary professionalism

Professionalism has long been a term understood to distinguish social strata, commonly highlighting those trusted to employ expert knowledge for the benefit of society. Professionalism however is evolving; this position article contributes to the subject in drawing together different threads of literature beyond empirical studies to extend the discussion on professionalism, shedding a light on an area of interest. Specifically, it is argued that professionalism is threatened by the shift of the loci of control from the traditional, occupational professional positions to what is now contemporary professionalism. To facilitate such a transition, trust, a long-time fundamental component of traditional professionalism, is being readily and overtly substituted by control, wielded in and by modern organisations for the primary benefit of that organisation. The first part of the article explicates an understanding of professionalism and trust. The following section then introduces the relationship between both traditional and contemporary professionalism with trust. The third part moves to discuss the rise of differing types of control, arguing that trust has been forced to take a minor role in contemporary notions of professionalism in organisational practice, leading to the term being utilised to induce the required behaviours within those organisations. The article concludes with direction on both potential implications and applications of the theoretical points raised through the discussion.

Communicative practices and perceptions towards stuttering people in South Africa.

A few studies have explored the life experiences of people who stutter. Research has shown that stuttering affects a significant number of people in the population. The study was designed to explore the experiences of people who stutter and the perception of stuttering in South Africa. Four people who identified as South Africans who stutter participated in this study. The primary investigator conducted semi-structured interviews with each of the participants. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to 20 acquaintances of all the participants. Transcriptions of interviews and results of questionnaires were analysed for major and minor themes. Results of this study suggest different perceptions by those who stutter and those acquainted with them. The findings of the study show that people who stutter experience communication barriers, so they adopt certain strategies to manage and cope with their speech disorder. The findings showed that stuttering has a pervasive impact on the lives of people who stutter and how they view themselves, considering negative societal views. Evaluation of the results from the study reveals that although stuttering is a common speech disorder, many people who are less informed about it harbour various stereotypes and myths that stigmatise stuttering. This study concludes by outlining recommendations for creating awareness of stuttering. It suggests vigorous campaigns aiming at promoting a multilevel approach that extends beyond the mere social and professional understanding of stuttering but addresses the inherent perceptions, myths, and stereotypes around stuttering.Contribution:Experiences of people who stutter and perceptions towards stuttering can help to better understand the speech disorder and overcome myths and stereotyping of stuttering.

Automatic analysis of public health service text based on character level convolutional neural network

The text information processing technology of public health service is one of the hot research topics at present. To improve the defects of public health service texts, such as inaccurate word segmentation, spelling errors and professional vocabulary understanding, this study designed a character-level deep neural network model on the characteristics of public health service texts. In this model, the bidirectional short and short time memory and the attention pooling operation layer are introduced to make the model better classify the text according to the context. In addition, counter perturbation is introduced in this study to improve the robustness and generalization ability of the model, thus improving its classification effect. The performance verification results show that the proposed model has better classification performance on the public health service text data set. The anti-disturbance samples generated by the model are all in the range of 0–0.2 when WMD deviation degree is measured, while most of the other methods are in the range of 0.4–0.6. The experimental object of this study is ultrasonic examination data. The experimental results show that the automatic analysis model of public health service text based on character level convolutional neural network constructed in this study has excellent accuracy and convergence speed, and has excellent performance in the classification of public health service text in different subject areas.

Encounters with public and professional understandings of Down syndrome: A qualitative study of parents' experiences.

The meanings of neurodevelopmental conditions are socially and culturally defined. We explored how parents of a child with Down syndrome experienced public and professional understandings of Down syndrome. Qualitative interviews with 25 parents of a child with Down syndrome living in Denmark. From a reflexive thematic analysis, we developed themes describing understandings (i.e., attitudes or perceptions) of Down syndrome. The parents experienced that the Down syndrome diagnosis acted as a 'label'; this had perceived positive and negative consequences for the child. The parents felt others understood Down syndrome as severe and undesirable. This attitude was tied to the existence of prenatal screening. Finally, to the parents, professional support for their child expressed an understanding of children with Down syndrome as valued individuals. Parents encountered ambiguous understandings of Down syndrome. This should be recognised by professionals who may shape such understandings.

Identifying the foundation: Connecting codes of ethics, accreditation, values, and social justice to the engineering curriculum

Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) graduate attributes are at the foundation of engineering curricular change in Canada. While CEAB graduate attributes require an understanding of ethics, professionalism, and impact, outcomes explicitly associated with equity, diversity, inclusion, indigeneity (EDI-I) and social justice broadly construed are absent. At present, the CEAB ethics criteria imply that understanding and valuing the code of ethics adequately addresses the issue, which leaves a gap in guidance for educators and curriculum designers. This paper reports on a thematic analysis of the 12 Canadian engineering codes of ethics and associated guidelines to discover the values overtly addressed or implied in the documents. We then map these findings onto the values of EDI-I and social justice as outlined by engineering scholars, and we offer recommendations for using the results to guide engineering instructors who want to make appropriate curriculum modifications that will support the CEAB efforts to address these movements.

초등교사의 디지털 리터러시 교육에 대한 인식 양상

Objectives This study focuses on examining the perception of digital literacy education by analyzing teaching and learning materials related to digital literacy education produced and shared by elementary school teachers.
 Methods To this end, we analyzed teaching and learning materials related to digital literacy shared through ‘Indie School’, a representative communication platform for elementary school teachers, and through this, we investigated when, what content, and why they are providing digital literacy education.
 Results First, teachers were mainly conducting digital literacy education using creative experiential activity time for upper grades, and the amount of teaching and learning materials showed a rapid increase starting in 2020. This can be said to show that teachers' interest in digital literacy education has increased rapidly since COVID-19, and that they recognize that upper grades are appropriate targets for digital literacy education. Second, it was confirmed that the learning content covered in the teaching and learning materials was concentrated on some content elements of digital literacy, and that some materials were not well differentiated from content elements of related concepts such as news literacy, media literacy, and digital citizenship. This suggests that teachers need a more specialized understanding of digital literacy concepts and characteristics. Third, teachers' digital literacy education objectives were broadly categorized into supporting digital literacy learning activities presented in textbooks, learners' low digital literacy levels, and preventing and resolving problems that appear in digital spaces.
 Conclusions Based on these results, this study focused on the need for teachers to have a more professional understanding of the concept of digital literacy, the need for support in various aspects to develop teaching and learning materials related to digital literacy, the need for development and distribution of teaching and learning materials for evaluation purposes and the need for research into appropriate teaching and learning methods.

Unlocking the Potential: Investigating Dental Practitioners' Willingness to Embrace Artificial Intelligence in Dental Practice.

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds significant promise for transforming healthcare delivery, including dentistry. However, the successful integration of AI into dental practice necessitates an understanding of dental professionals' perspectives, attitudes, and readiness to adopt AI technology. This study aimed to explore dental professionals' perceptions, attitudes, and practices regarding AI adoption in dentistry. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 256 dental professionals using an online questionnaire. Participants were assessed for familiarity with AI technology, perceived barriers to adoption, attitudes towards AI, current usage patterns, and factors influencing adoption decisions. Data are analysed using descriptive statistics, including frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. Inferential statistics, such as chi-square tests and regression analysis, were employed to examine associations between variables and identify predictors of AI adoption in dentistry. The study surveyed 256 dental professionals from various regions across India, primarily aged 30 to 50 years (mean age: 42.6), with a nearly equal gender split (male: 48.4%, female: 51.6%) and high educational attainment (67.8% with master's or doctoral degrees). Private practices were predominant (56.3%). The diagnostic algorithms and treatment planning software were well known (77.3% and 70.3% familiarity, respectively). Technical concerns (average score: 3.82 ± 0.68) were the main barriers to AI adoption, followed by financial considerations (average score: 3.45 ± 0.72), ethical and legal issues (average score: 3.21 ± 0.65), and organizational factors (average score: 3.67 ± 0.71). Despite these concerns, most participants had positive attitudes towards AI (70.3% agreed). Current usage varied, with diagnostic support and administrative tasks being the most common (44.5% and 82.8% usage, respectively). Perceived utility (average score: 4.12 ± 0.75) and ease of use (average score: 3.98 ± 0.69) significantly influenced adoption, as identified by regression analysis (perceived utility: β = 0.342, p < 0.001; ease of use: β = 0.267, p = 0.005). This study provides valuable insights into AI adoption in dentistry, highlighting the multifaceted nature of barriers and facilitators that influence dental professionals' adoption decisions. Strategies to promote AI adoption should address practical considerations, ethical concerns, and educational needs to facilitate the integration of AI technology into dental practices.

‘Enemy Action’: The UK Ministry of Defence, Academia and the Historical Record

The publication of Uncivil War, Huw Bennett’s history of the early years of the Northern Ireland conflict, has highlighted an increasingly obstructive and uncooperative approach by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) towards academic researchers. Geraint Hughes argues that the impediments the MoD is placing by restricting access to archival evidence on recent military conflicts is not only undemocratic, but also distorts public awareness of the complexities of these wars, and hampers the British armed forces’ own efforts to develop as ‘learning institutions’ that can use military history to support their own professional understanding of the challenges posed by contemporary warfare. He calls for a dialogue between the MoD and the academic community that addresses the balance between operational security and accountability, and contributes to a mutually beneficial relationship where scholarship can contribute to the armed forces’ own process of self and institutional education.◼

"When a story gets a face…": Visual elicitation of Serbian perspectives on Afghan refugee women's maternity experiences in Serbia.

Serbia is a country through which many Afghans pass, en route to the European Union. Pregnancy and birth continues for Afghan women while journeying. This study aims to examine the understanding and attitudes of Serbian health professionals and members of women's civil society organisations (CS0) about the perinatal experiences of Afghan women in Serbia, using a webcomic to elicit responses. A total of 38 respondents completed the questionnaire, including health professionals (n = 10), women's CSO members (n = 6), and others (n = 10). The majority had little awareness of the experiences of Afghan women around the childbearing time and for most respondents, viewing the webcomic raised their awareness. Qualitative questionnaire data were analysed thematically, and four inductive themes developed: (1) maternal health provision as inadequate; (2) Afghan women face difficulties in Serbia; (3) solidarity with Afghan women; and (4) the webcomic raises awareness. Webcomics, as a visual modality, may play a valuable role in increasing empathy and awareness of refugee women's perinatal experiences among citizens.

Sociological Study of the Legal Patterns in Therapeutic Agreement Relationships

This study examines the therapeutic agreement relationship between doctors and patients within the context of healthcare services from the perspective of legal sociology and applicable regulations. Health, as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Indonesian Constitution, requires a supporting legal framework, as regulated in Law No. 17 of 2023 on Health. The therapeutic relationship, built on a mutual agreement between therapists and patients, is strengthened by factors such as trust, empathy, and openness, affecting the effectiveness of therapy. This research employs a normative legal method to elucidate existing legal issues, identify gaps between legal theory and practice, and propose solutions. The results indicate the importance of a deep understanding of social interaction in a legal context and the significant role of law in ensuring the application of ethical and responsible medical practices. This research aims to enhance patient awareness of their rights, expand the understanding of doctors and healthcare professionals about their professional obligations, and assist hospitals in improving service quality and reducing litigation risks.

‘Satisficing’ in dentistry: who decides? who benefits?

This series of articles challenges some popular myths about supposedly ‘ideal’ treatment plans, and is designed to provoke reflection and stimulate debate. It explains the concept of ‘satisficing’ (as opposed to ‘maximizing’) in dentistry, and illustrates how subconscious bias and self-interests might lead supposed experts to promote arbitrary aspirational standards and confuse them with what the law expects (the Bolam Test standard) and what is genuinely in the best interests of an individual patient. It is argued that sound, patient-centred pragmatic planning and treatment is equally valid, with wider applicability than routinely defaulting to a self-serving ‘maximalist’ approach, often on spurious grounds. CPD/Clinical Relevance: The ‘satisficing’ concept has wide and profound application across many fields of dentistry; this first part explains the basic principles and how and why it is relevant to various aspects of practical dentistry and also to our understanding of professionalism.

Healthcare Professionals' Perceptions about the Implementation of Shared Decision-Making in Primary Care: A Qualitative Study from a Virtual Community of Practice.

The incorporation of shared decision making (SDM) is a central part of empowerment processes, as it facilitates greater activation on the part of patients, increasing the likelihood of them gaining control over their healthcare and developing skills to solve their health problems. Despite these benefits, there are still difficulties in the implementation of SDM among healthcare professionals due to internal and external factors related to the context and health systems. To explore primary care professionals (PCPs)' perceptions of the SDM model, based on their preconceptions and experience in clinical practice. A framework analysis was conducted on qualitative data derived from a virtual community practice forum, within a cluster-randomized clinical trial developed in the e-MPODERA project. The most important points in the opinions of the PCPs were: exploring the patients' values, preferences and expectations, providing them with and checking their understanding of up-to-date and evidence-based health information. The analysis revealed three themes: determinants of the implementation process of SDM, lack of consistency and dilemmas and benefits of PCP active listening, motivation and positive expectations of SDM. In our initial analysis, we examined the connections between the categories of the TDC model and its application in the primary care context. The categories related to the model reflect the theoretical understanding of professionals, while those related to perceptions of its application and use show certain discrepancies. These discrepancies could indicate a lack of understanding of the model and its real-world implications or insufficient commitment on the part of professionals or the organization to ensure its effective implementation. Specific targeted training that addresses knowledge, attitudes and practice may resolve the aforementioned findings.

Adoption of evidence-based end-of-life and bereavement support to families in cancer care: A contextual analysis study with health professionals.

To investigate the level of adoption of evidence-based family engagement and support during end-of-life cancer care and subsequent bereavement and its contextual facilitators and barriers from health professionals' perspectives, and to explore differences between professional groups. Contextual analysis using an online cross-sectional survey. This study was conducted in four Swiss hospitals and three home care oncology and palliative care services. Non-parametric testing was used to investigate the level of adoption and differences between nurses, physicians, occupational- and physiotherapists and psychosocial professionals (chaplains, onco-psychologists and social workers). The STROBE checklist for cross-sectional studies was followed. The majority of the 111 participating health professionals were nurses. Adoption was statistically significantly higher during end-of-life care than bereavement, with nurses and physicians reporting higher levels than the other professional groups. Guidance on end-of-life family care was available in about half of the cases, in contrast to a quarter for bereavement care. Self-perceived knowledge, skills and attitudes were moderate to high, with nurses and physicians reporting higher levels than others, except for general skills in working with families. Organisational structures were experienced as rather supportive, with the psychosocial group appraising the organisational context as significantly less conducive to fully implementing end-of-life and bereavement care than others, particularly during the end-of-life phase. Evidence-based family engagement and support were better adopted during end-of-life care than bereavement. Overall, nurses and physicians felt better enabled to care for families compared to other professional groups. No patient or public contribution. https://osf.io/j4kfh. Implementation and quality improvement efforts should focus particularly on the bereavement phase and be tailored to professional groups. The findings show that evidence-based family engagement and support practices during end-of-life were rather well adopted in contrast to subsequent bereavement care, with nurses and physicians better enabled than other professionals to provide care. A better understanding of health professionals' contributions and roles in family care is important to build interprofessional capacity for evidence-based end-of-life and bereavement support. The STROBE checklist for reports of cross-sectional studies was followed (von Elm etal., 2007).

Developmental language disorder and neurodiversity: Surfacing contradictions, tensions and unanswered questions.

Neurodiversity is increasingly discussed in relation to autism research and practice. However, there is a lack of scholarship concerning the neurodevelopmental condition of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and the neurodiversity movement. While this movement may hold opportunities for the DLD community, the application of the concept of neurodiversity to DLD research and practice needs consideration, as DLD and autism have very different levels of public and professional awareness and understanding. In this article, we discuss what the concept of neurodiversity and the associated neurodiversity movement could mean for DLD research and practice. We aim to critique some assumptions that may arise from the application of neurodiversity principles (or assumed principles) to the field of DLD. This is a discussion paper, drawing on the personal experiences and reflections of the author team. We make the case for why DLD should be included in discussions about neurodivergence and outline considerations for doing so, and why some issues and applications may be particular to DLD. We outline points of similarity and contrast with autism in relation to our understanding of neurodiversity. We consider the issues around diagnosis and terminology and urge practitioners to continue to diagnose DLD using currently agreed terminology, so as not to undermine recent awareness efforts. We note that a neurodiversity-informed perspective challenges us to offer interventions that operate at the level of our environments, not just at the level of an individual. Indeed, neurodiversity offers a platform to argue for better rights and more inclusive spaces in mental health settings, education and work for children and adults with DLD. DLD should be considered from a neurodiversity-informed perspective, and it is our hope that this will lead to neurodiversity-affirming practice that will afford young people with DLD better understanding from members of the public and the professionals who work with them. Further work is needed to better support children, young people and adults with DLD to have a voice in the neurodiversity movement. What is already known on the subject Neurodiversity approaches are increasingly being taken up in research and practice in relation to autism, meaning that our understanding of autism and how autistic people are supported is increasingly drawing on the principles of neurodiversity. However, autism is not the only neurodivergent population. Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is another neurodevelopmental condition; however, relative to autism, DLD has lower awareness amongst professionals and the public. There has been no scholarship that has examined DLD through the lens of neurodiversity, or considered the application of neurodiversity-affirming approaches to DLD. What this paper adds to existing knowledge In this paper, we examine what the neurodiversity movement means for DLD research and practice. In particular, we consider what neurodiversity in the field of autism might teach us about the application of neurodiversity in the field of DLD, and highlight where we believe there are important differences between the two populations. We reflect on what neurodiversity means for intervention, diagnosis, terminology and championing the need for accessibility, especially with regard to mental health support, education and employment. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Neurodiversity highlights the need to consider interventions at the level of an individual's environment (e.g., how can we make this space more inclusive?) as well as interventions operating at the level of the individual themselves (e.g., interventions focusing on an individual's language skills). We challenge the notion that neurodiversity-affirming approaches mean not diagnosing DLD or changing DLD's terminology: we argue that this is not in the spirit of the original neurodiversity movement, but also that for a condition with such low public awareness, these actions could do more harm than good for families affected by DLD. We call for more in-depth scholarship and discussion around the application of neurodiversity approaches to DLD and argue that the neurodiversity movement offers an important opportunity to raise better awareness and understanding of DLD in multiple sectors, including (but not limited to) mental health, education and employment.

Evaluation of an online interprofessional course on ethics and professionalism: experience of medical, dental, and pharmacy students

IntroductionEthics and professionalism in the health professions reflect how health professionals behave during practice, based on their professional values and attitudes. Health professions education institutions have implemented various strategies for teaching ethics and professionalism, including interprofessional education. The aim of the study was to evaluate the perception of undergraduate health professions students about the outcomes of an online interprofessional course in ethics and professionalism as well as their perception of interprofessional education and the importance of ethics and professionalism after taking the course.MethodsThis is a descriptive cross-sectional study that targeted medical, dentistry, and pharmacy students. A researcher-made 31-item questionnaire was used. The questionnaire was tested for face, content, and construct validity. Reliability of the questionnaire was estimated by Cronbach alpha test. Descriptive statistics were used. T-test was performed to compare the results of male and female students and ANOVA was performed to compare the results of medical, dentistry, and pharmacy students. Statistical significance was set at p &amp;lt; 0.05.ResultsFactor analysis of the questionnaire yielded three factors, namely course evaluation, perception of interprofessional education, and importance of ethics and professionalism in health professions education. The study participants expressed positive perceptions of all aspects of the course. They reported positive perceptions of interprofessional education, highlighting its benefits in enhancing understanding, teamwork skills, and respect for other healthcare professionals. The findings reveal some program-related differences in participants’ responses, where medical students showed higher ratings of all aspects of the course, interprofessional education and importance of ethics and professionalism.ConclusionStudents of the three programs showed positive perceptions of the online IPE course on ethics and professionalism as well as the benefits of IPE and the importance of ethics and professionalism. This highlights the effectiveness of the course in addressing such important aspects of health professions education.