Students’ views on peer evaluation and professionalism: “getting away with it”

Abstract

Background: This study describes how undergraduate medical students perceive professionalism and their views on peer evaluation as a tool for measuring professionalism. Summary of work: 12 undergraduate medical students participated in focus groups after completing a peer evaluation. Focus groups were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were coded using a grounded theory approach. This study has since been expanded to include Durham University’s current cohort and the University of Liverpool students. Summary of results: Two main themes emerged; students’ perceptions of how professionalism relates to them (subthemes were attributes, (ir)relevance to students and teaching & learning of professionalism) and views of the design of a peer evaluation tool (subthemes were; online environment, eliminating anonymity, justifying choices and promoting reflection). Conclusions: Students appear to know professionalism should be shown in an academic situation; however they feel that as students they should be able to “get away with it”. Thus, students regard professionalism as only relevant in a clinical context, and call for leniency in preclinical years. Students are accepting of peer evaluation for measuring professionalism; preferring an online environment, with the opportunity to justify their decisions. Students report peer evaluation as a driver for reflection on their own behaviour. Take-home message: Students view professionalism as irrelevant outside of the clinical environment