Peer assessment of professionalism: a five-year experience in medical clerkship.

Background: Faculty assessment of students' professionalism is often based upon sporadic exposure to students. Peers are in a unique position to provide valid judgments of these behaviors.

Objective: (1) To learn if peer assessments of professional conduct correlate with traditional performance measures; (2) to determine if peer assessments of professionalism influence the designation of honors, and (3) to explore student and faculty opinions regarding peer assessment.

Methods: Internal Medicine Clerkship at Southern Illinois University. Methods: Since 2001 anonymous student peer assessments of professionalism have been used in assigning clerkship grades.

Results: Peer assessments of professionalism had weak, though significant, correlations with faculty ratings (r = 0.29), performance on the NBME subject test (r = 0.28), and performance on a cumulative performance assessment (r = 0.30), and did not change the total number of honors awarded. A majority of students (71%) felt comfortable evaluating their peers, and 77% would keep the peer evaluation procedure in place. A majority of faculty (83%) indicated that peer assessments added valuable information.

Conclusions: Peer assessments of professional conduct have little correlation with other performance measures, are more likely to have a positive influence on final clerkship grades, and have little impact on awarding honors.