Professionalism Behaviors in Family Medicine
Family medicine organizations are collaborating to re-examine the meaning, teaching, and assessment of professionalism. This page lists behaviors, developed by an STFM Professionalism Task Force, to serve as a foundation for the development of future Professionalism curriculum, assessment tools, and faculty development.
Foundational Duties/HR/Employment Behaviors
Reliability and Accountability
- Is present, prepared, and dependable for all clinical, educational, and professional responsibilities
- Completes assigned work for clinical care, documentation, administrative tasks, and required training within expected timeframes
- Follows through on patient care orders, inbox messages and results, referrals, and handoffs
Communication and Team Functioning
- Communicates clearly, respectfully, and responsively with patients, colleagues, supervisors, and staff
- Participates constructively with healthcare team members and during educational activities
- Seeks clarification and notifies appropriate individuals when unable to meet responsibilities
Use of Time, Scope, and Resources
- Practices within assigned scope, supervision, and role expectations
- Adheres to established workplace policies, schedules, and call responsibilities
Professional Identity Behaviors
Direct Patient Care
- Knows limits of clinical competence and seeks consultation to optimize patient care
- Empowers and educates patients to help them make informed decisions about their treatment
- Prioritizes patients' goals and welfare when navigating clinical decisions, performance incentives, system pressures, and competing interests
- Demonstrates a commitment to equity by seeking to understand patients’ identities and contexts, and by addressing bias and inequities in care
- Strives to provide cost-effective care
- Advocates for patients at the individual, system, and public health level
- Adapts scope of practice to the needs, values, and context of the communities served
- Respects patient privacy, autonomy, and cultural differences
System/Health Care Community
- Understands and generally follows organizational policies and uses appropriate channels when policies conflict with ethical or professional obligations
- Contributes actively to shared team goals, communicates openly, and supports other team members
- Identifies and addresses unprofessional behavior
- Discloses errors, professionalism lapses, and/or adverse events and participates in follow up, contributing to individual and system learning
- Helps prepare future physicians
- Identifies and mitigates conflicts of interest
Personal
- Pursues professional growth and fulfillment
- Engages in self-reflection about professional strengths, limitations, and impacts on others, and adjusts behavior accordingly
- Seeks and demonstrates growth from feedback
- Recognizes factors that affect personal well-being, takes reasonable steps to address them, and seeks support when needed to sustain safe, compassionate care
Other Pages Related to Professionalism in Family Medicine Education
Professionalism Initiative
An STFM Professionalism in Family Medicine Education Task Force, chaired by STFM Past President Joe Gravel, MD, is working on tactics to support family medicine faculty as they seek to teach professionalism in an era where physicians are challenged with upholding the best interests of patients while taking into account the goals of the institutions or practices that employ them.
Professionalism Summit
The STFM Professionalism in Family Medicine Education Task Force held a summit on September 2–3, 2025. See the goals and results of the summit.The objectives of this summit were to:
