Medical professionalism in clinical and surgical specialties: an analysis of Latin American physicians

Introduction: professionalism is crucial in medical practice and can vary by specialty. Factors such as ethical behavior and commitment to continuing education influence professional performance. Objective: to identify behaviors associated with professionalism that differentiate clinical and surgical specialist physicians. Methodology: 424 physicians from Peru, Paraguay, and Cuba were evaluated and classified intoclinical (n = 296) and surgical (n = 128) specialties. The CHAID (Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection) method was applied with 43 indicators and 7 dimensions to identify predictors of professionalism. Results: the CHAID analysis showed significant differences between specialties. Themost influential variable was “I sneak out of the hospital while on duty” (p<0.001), with a higher representation of clinical specialist physicians who never did this (77.70 %) compared to surgical specialists (22.30 %), with means of 1.13 versus 1.31, respectively. The variable “neglecting continuing education” (p=0.002) showed that more clinical specialist physicians did not neglect their training (71.90%) with a mean of 1.14, while those who did so reached 88.8 % (surgical: 11.2 %) with a mean of 1.28. In the dimensions “dishonesty and unsafe practice” and “irresponsible conduct and disabilities”, physicians with negative behaviors had higher means (1.36 and 1.29) than those without these practices (1.13 and 1.10). Conclusions: the CHAID analysis revealed key differences in medical professionalism by specialty, associating the absence of negative behaviors and commitment to continuing education with higher levels of professionalism, especially in clinical specialist physicians.