Professionalism has become one of the core competencies in medical education which will shape physicians’s behavior in the future to provide high-quality and patient-centered care services. Objectives: To assess the perceptions and attitudes of medical students regarding professionalism in health care. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out with 717 second-year and fifth-year medical students of Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University. Results: Students’ perception on professionalism was not high, at 3.85 out of 5 points. In which, “respect” was the domain having highest score and “communication skills” was the lowest recognition domain (4.15 and 3.54 out of 5, respectively). Preclinical students had higher perception than students having clinical experiences in all aspects of professionalism (p<0.05). Conclusion: Priority should be given to train professionalism and communication skills through the early clinical exposure program and hidden curriculum across all years of medical education program. Furthermore, the core aspects of professionalism are needed to be consistently identified and evaluated in the training program among medical universities in Vietnam

Background: Blended learning offers opportunities for the complexity of learning in clinical education. Student peer assessment is widely used as a form of formative assessment in early clinical exposure programs, especially clinical communication skills training. This study aimed to describe clinical communication skills competencies of second-year students and to identify the relationships between peer and faculty assessment of communication skills in a blended learning program format. Methods: A total of 474 second-year general medical students and dental students participated in the study. Peer and lecturer assessment forms with a 5-point Likert scale according to the Calgary-Cambridge guide format were used to evaluate students’ performance of basic communication skills, relationship building, and history taking. Pearson’s correlation coefficients and paired t-test were applied. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Most of students were rated at distinction level (score at 7-8.4) in communication skills. Mean of the overall score by peer and faculty assessment were 7.46 ± 1.03 and 7.17 ± 0.68, respectively. Peers rarely provided negative ratings on subcategories of communication skills. Skills of understanding the patient’s perspectives and gathering information were the most reported skills needed to improve among students. Significant positive correlations were found between peer and faculty evaluations for building relationship, establishing initial rapport, and gathering information domains (p < 0.01). Students tended to grade their colleagues higher for building relationship (3.88 ± 0.62) and establishing initial rapport domains (3.72 ± 0.61) than other domains, meanwhile, teachers tended to grade building relationship (3.80 ± 0.55) and gathering information domains (3.64 ± 0.38) higher than other domains. Conclusion: The findings suggest that student peer evaluation can be valuable for clinical education. As part of a formative assessment, it can be also used for faculty to evaluate students’ clinical communication skills performance in innovative medical education programs. Key words: peer assessment, clinical communication skills, practice of medicine, early clinical practice, blended learning.

Background: Communication Skills (CS) in Medicine has been considered one of the most fundamental competencies to be required of medical professionals. However, there is not guarantee that students fully grasp the usefulness of CS for clinical practice. The objectives of our study were therefore to (1) describe Year 2 to Year 5 medical students’ attitudes towards CS training and its associations, and to (2) investigate Year 2 to Year 5 medical students’ self-assessment of CS training and effective medical CS training. Methods: This is a non-randomized control trial study, using the Communication Skills Attitudes Scale (CSAS) designed by Rees from Nottingham University and Gap-Kalamazoo Communication Skills Assessment Form (G-KCSF) designed by Rider from Harvard University. Results: In general, students showed positive attitudes towards CS training (positive attitude scale (PAS): 3.55 (0.5); negative attitude scale (NAS): 2.77 (0.43). Females showed higher scores on the PAS than males (p<0.001) and lower scores on the NAS (p<0.001). The second- or third-year medical students showed higher scores on the PAS (p<0.001) than their fourth- and fifth-year counterparts. The scores of all essential elements of CS were highest among the second-year students, decreasing among the third- and fourth-year students before increasing again among the fifth-year students. The students who had medical CS training scored higher on the PAS, lower on the NAS, and on all essential elements of CS. Conclusions: Medical students at Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy expressed positive attitudes towards CS training. Training medical students in CS was able to improve their attitudes and CS.