Educating and Training to Professionalism Initiative

In 2010, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) jointly launched a pilot program to teach professionalism to the next generation of physicians and establish professionalism as a standard that can be instilled and cultivated through medical education.

Last year, five academic medical centers were awarded funds for a two-year period to design and implement innovative programs to teach professionalism to students and residents. Awardees include:

Baylor College of Medicine

State University of New York, Stony Brook

University of California, Davis

University of Massachusetts

University of South Florida and Lehigh Valley Health Network (Pennsylvania)

IMAP garnered overwhelming interest in the program, receiving 70 applications for the five awards, many from leading academic medical schools. Now, IMAP will expand the initiative to fund the development of 15 new educational programs in professionalism over the next three years. Programs will establish new models and curriculums for professionalism education as well as faculty development programs. The emphasis of these programs will be on learning through the clinical experience, not classroom presentations—currently, a significant gap exists between the norms of professionalism as defined in formal lectures and the reality of experience in clinical settings. In addition, participants will be invited to attend an annual Macy-IMAP meeting on Educating to Professionalism. 

Guided by lessons and successes from these programs, IMAP will develop a report on “best practices” to offer academic medical centers guidance on the process of implementing professionalism education.

• 2011 Grantees
• 2012 Grantees
• 2013 Grantees