The Role of Anatomy in Teaching Professionalism: Frameworks for Students’ Progress

Can professionalism in students be enhanced by a new, shared vocabulary that is explicitly developmental and behavioral rather than cognitive in structure? This presentation will discuss alternative educational frameworks in which professionalism can be located. Since the traditional “analytic” framework (knowledge, skills and attitudes) and developmental frameworks are more familiar, emphasis will be placed on a “synthetic” framework, which expresses a student's progress as “reporter”, “interpreter” and “manager/educator”. This “RIME” framework attempts to capture the classic rhythm of observation‐reflection‐action that is familiar to all scientists and clinicians; it uses less generic, more behavioral terms for how skills, knowledge and attitude must all be brought to bear at the same time by a successful student. Successful “RIME” behavior in anatomy class is visualized as a way that students earn the right to participate in patient care.