The Conscientiousness Index: A Novel Tool to Explore Students’ Professionalism

Abstract

The results suggest that the CI measures a scalar objective trait that corresponds well with professional behavior as perceived by staff members in an undergraduate medical school. The individual decisions making up the CI are objective and easy to collect, making it a relatively simple and uncontroversial method for exploring students' professionalism.

The Clinical Conscientiousness Index

“…The 'Conscientiousness Index' (CI) was developed at Durham University, UK and consists of points awarded and deducted for a range of objective administrative measures, resulting in each student having a CI score at the end of the academic year. The CI scores showed a positive correlation with staff estimates of professionalism (6) and also with estimates of professionalism made by peers (7).…”

“…In line with the original study (6), all students started with a baseline 50 CCI points. This was done to avoid some students CCI scores being negative at the end of the year.…”

“…Similar to the original study (6,7), all clinical site tutors, who have ongoing regular contact with students (n=7) rated the students professionalism using the statements below. From these ratings a Professionalism Index (PI) was calculated for all students , anonymous to the students' CCI scores.…”

“…One such measure is the Conscientiousness Index (6,7). In an attempt to develop an objective, scalar proxy measure of the trait of professionalism, which could be shown to be valid and reliable, but also cost effective, a measure of diligence or conscientiousness has been explored.…”

Selection methods in healthcare professions: where are we now and where next?

“…However, this a relatively untouched area in medicine selection, despite the pressing need for medical professionals to ''do more with less'', and the changing nature of many medical roles to require entrepreneurialism in the future (Gregory 2009). Patterson and Zibarras (2016) note that conscientiousness and innovation have been found to correlate negatively, which raises a challenging dilemma since previous research has consistently shown a positive association between conscientiousness and various indices of education and training success and job performance (McLachlan and Macnaughton 2009;Woods et al 2016;Barrick et al 2001). This study explores the use of a trait-based measure of creativity and innovation potential and evaluates its efficacy for use in selection for medical education; finding that different aspects of innovation are associated with different sub-facets of conscientiousness, and that motivation to change is the key significant predictor of creative problem solving, over and above personality traits.…”