Attitudes of Medical Faculty Enrolled in Masters in Health Professions Education towards Professionalism in a Private Pakistani University: a Mixed-Methods Study

Objective: To examine the attitudes of medical faculty enrolled in the Masters in Health Professions Education (MHPE) program towards professionalism at Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, Islamabad. Methodology: The study was conducted at Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, Islamabad from August 2024 to January 2025 after ethical approval. After taking informed consent, universal sampling technique was used to enroll all 40 MHPE faculty members. Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered to explore dimensions of professionalism including excellence, altruism, honor & integrity, accountability, duty and respect. A 36-item validated Likert-scale questionnaire assessed attitude of MHPE faculty, complemented by four in-depth semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. For the analysis of qualitative data, Notta software was used. Results: Quantitative analysis revealed most of the participants were females [28(70%)] and belonged to MBBS background [21(52.5%)]. Our participants exhibited poor professional attitudes indicated by low mean scores of professionalism (2.07-/+0.45) and its six domains. A significant positive correlation was present between professionalism and variables such as excellence (r=0.77), duty (r=0.68), and altruism (r=0.68). Regression analysis confirmed these as key predictors. Qualitative themes highlighted challenges in curriculum integration, resource gaps, and the influence of institutional culture. Conclusion: Our results showed poor attitudes of MHPE enrolled medical faculty towards professionalism indicated by low mean scores of professionalism and its six domains of altruism, respect, honor & integrity, accountability, duty, and excellence. Our thematic analysis identified professionalism as one of the fundamentals of medical education. Time & resource constraints and role ambiguity were major challenges towards integration of professionalism into medical courses and the role of institutional support was also highlighted.