Volume 8, Issue 2 - February 2025

Dear subscriber,

In this second issue of The Academy: A Forum for Conversations about Health Care Professionalism, we take up a key question for members of professions: how do professions endure? How do they continue through time? One answer to these questions is that they do so, in part, via training new (potential) members of a profession. The education of future members of the profession is one essential part of satisfying the obligation that professionals have in light of the commonly held belief that professions ought to possess “A commitment to preserving and enhancing the special knowledge,”  a knowledge that marks them out as professionals. This is accomplished both through formal and informal education: dental schools, medical schools, colleges of nursing, health professions schools, et cetera, but also through the sharing of new knowledge through mechanisms such as peer reviewed journals. It is this final topic that we focus on in this issue; though we only chip away at the big question, the future of peer reviewed journals and their ability to aid professionals in satisfying this obligation is questioned in light of the processing fees that are charged by some places. In our first article, Jane Montague and Vijay Rajput, explain the relevant features of paying for publications and the various models that might be employed, raising issues that healthcare professionals ought to consider. In our second article, Arthur Caplan, from a bioethics perspective, addresses ethical issues associated with paying for publication. This system, which he highlights with a powerful personal narrative, is in need of change.

The third article of this issue, written by Tom Koch, summarizes a recent book that will be of interest to those thinking about healthcare professionalism. That book, Seeking Medicine’s Moral Centre: Ethics, Bioethics, and Medical Assistance in Dying, is published by Ethics Press, and traces accounts of professionalism and ethics to roots in Hippocratic and in bioethics sources.

Customary announcements and goings on about the professionalism town are also included in this issue; of note is APHC’s LEEP program and the upcoming Round Table.

Bryan Pilkington, PhD, is Professor of Bioethics, in the Department of Medical Sciences, at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, and the Editor-in-Chief of The Academy.

Sources:
1.      Buchanan, Allen E. 2009. Justice and Health Care: Selected Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.

1. Applications for the Leadership Excellence in Educating for Professionalism Faculty Development Program (LEEP) are OPEN!

2. Open Access Publication: Noble idea has become Academic Integrity Challenge for Health Professionals 
3. Academic Publication is Utterly Broken
4. Ethics, Bioethics, and Professionalism Today
5. APHC Roundtable - Enhancing Educational Interactions by Exploring Motivational Styles with Gurjit Sandhu
6. Medical Humanities Workforce Training Program for Physicians | McGovern Medical School
7. ABMS Conference 2025 Call for Sessions, Posters Now Open
8. Healthcare Professionalism: Education, Research & Resources Podcast
9. APHC Member Benefits

Since 2020, the LEEP program has graduated 43 faculty with knowledge and skills essential to implement curricula at the UME, GME and faculty levels as well as assessment and remediation initiatives. Some of our faculty fellows have expanded social justice, community engagement and DEI programs. All of these faculty fellows have participated in monthly seminars designed to provide small communities of learning with faculty mentors and fellows discussing with global experts their expertise to stimulate deeper understanding and skills.

Faculty at all levels of academic rank and all disciplines are welcome to apply. We have benefitted from participation of faculty from nursing, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy, physician assistant, psychology and social work as well as candidates for masters and doctorates in education. Our fellows also come from schools around the world.

The next LEEP cohort will start with a pre-course at the annual meeting to introduce fellows to one another, definitions of professionalism, resources useful in design of professionalism programs, and core aspects of mentoring. We will continue with monthly seminars for the next 11 months, finishing with a celebration of completion at the next annual meeting. Our LEEP faculty fellows, whether junior or senior, come away with a new appreciation for how we can transform health care through professionalism. Join the APHC’s LEEP program!

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Philanthropists and scientists dedicated to equal scientific access, along with other invested academics, convened at the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2002. These pioneers of Open Access Publishing (OAP) hoped to break down traditional barriers to access and encourage global scientific communication. Through free public access, OAP democratizes knowledge and promotes equitable access. OAP facilitates the spread of knowledge and can enhance collaboration between researchers across the globe, minimizing the issue of the global North versus South in access to information. Clinicians can apply real-time knowledge across the globe to all patients, allowing for more equity. The best example of OA occurred during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when scientists freely shared new research. One site, created by the CDC and WHO, published all new COVID-19 research, allowing free access to researchers worldwide.

Zero sum game: Shifting the Burden from Reader to Authors
As costs rise, universities and academic centers have been forced to scale back on journal subscriptions. This is especially true for smaller or less-funded universities, which face greater financial challenges in maintaining multiple subscriptions. OAP makes manuscripts available worldwide, and recently, OAP materials have not only been attracting a larger audience but also more citations than similar non-OA materials. Visibility and citations are essential for a researcher’s career and recognition in their field. Unfortunately, these advantages can be obstacles for authors who are unable to publish in OAP due to a lack of funding.

In OA, an article processing charge (APC) is paid by authors and is justified as providing financial support for journals websites, peer review, and sustainably growth. APCs replace typical revenue generated from subscriptions and place the financial burden on authors. For researchers with limited funding, APCs may exceed their budgets, forcing them to either dip into their own funds or exclude them completely from publishing in OAP journals. In research, citations and visibility are paramount to career advancement. By only accepting researchers able to pay the price, APCs can lead to wealthier facilities and researchers unfairly dominating and excelling in the scientific field, leaving underfunded competitors behind.

Ethical and Equity Issue with OAP
APCs may be viewed as a quality measure, with higher costs indicating prestige. When publishing, researchers consider the reputation of journals, usually using impact factor as the primary criterion for judging credibility. As a result, costly APCs can exclude researchers without institutional funding from publishing in reputable OAP journals, limiting researchers’ ability to reach wider audiences and forcing them to publish behind a paywall. APCs present a huge financial burden to all authors without substantial funding but especially exclude authors in low-income countries, contributing to global inequities in HPE publishing. High APCs limit the production and sharing of research from certain countries, reducing overall global inclusion and diversity. This reinforces existing global inequities in the dissemination of research. Medical education research already lacks diversity among publishers, with 80% of all medical education research listing main authors in the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia – all high-income countries. APCs inadvertently reinforce established hierarchies in the scientific field, excluding authors from countries without proper research or institutional funding. On a global level, APCs can diminish the diversity of authors publishing in OA, disproportionately leaving out authors from certain low-income countries.

Is Academic Integrity at Risk with OAP?
The selection of articles for OAP journals is, to an extent, influenced by money and resources. The quality of publications may decrease in both the diversity and integrity of published research as editors now have an incentive to accept subpar research papers, since OA journals are reliant on APCs profit. In OAP journals, publishers are now accepting a higher number of articles, possibly because the rejection of manuscripts decreases profit. Critics argue that these high journal acceptance rates and quick peer review times have contributed to the decline of research quality and the integrity of the peer reviewed process.

There is also an increase in the number of journals, as large publishers create more titles, saturating the market. Springer, one of the largest scientific publishers, increased its number of journals by 840% from 2010 to 2019. This is likely a strategy to fill the market with new, less rigorous titles, allowing the company to operate under OA while still maintaining its traditional publishing model. OAP was expected to diminish large publishers profits, but it has instead allowed commercial publishers to create new revenue streams by buying or creating gold OA and hybrid journals, in addition to their traditional subscriptions. BioMed Central (BMC), originally a pioneer in OA publishing, was acquired by Springer Nature in 2008, and over time, standard APCs have tripled, from $525 to over $1500.

Instead of OA eliminating excessive scholarly publishing costs, traditional publishers have appropriated the movement, using OAP to increase profits. The cost of publishing is rising as SAGE, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis continue to grow with astonishingly high profit margins of over 30 percent, over the average for every business sector of the Fortune 500. While underfunded libraries struggle to pay for subscription journals and academics go unpaid, publishers are making enormous profits and abusing the system on both ends.

Predatory Journals
As publishing models become increasingly financially restrictive, potential authors are forced to either publish in traditional formats, ensuring a narrower audience, or pay APCs out of already limited funds. This has created an opportunity for predatory journals, which pose as legitimate OAP journals, claiming lower APCs, high acceptance rates and faster review times, attracting many authors. Predatory journals are a gray area, as authors often struggle to differentiate them from legitimate journals. Predatory journals have little to no quality control or peer review, lack ethical and academic integrity, and mislead authors into paying APCs. As OAP becomes more popular and necessary for advancement, researchers may feel pressured to publish in a journal that can give them broad exposure. If other well-known OA journals have expensive APCs, authors may be misled by lower APCs in predatory journals. Predatory journals can especially affect lower-income authors, who may only be able to afford the lower APCs. Scholars believe predatory journals have increasingly become a problem due to the precedent set by OAP journals, where the acceptance of articles has become a financial transaction between journals and authors.

Imperfect solutions for Changing the OA System
OAP was created to solve a barrier to accessibility but has unfortunately led to new unethical practices and inequalities. Despite the substantial ethical dilemmas caused by OAP, new promising movements hope to promote equity and fair opportunities. Many publishing companies are beginning to offer discounted APCs to researchers in low-income countries or even waive costs. Some libraries also provide scholarships to cover APCs for underserved authors. In the hopes of eradicating the problem completely, some groups are calling for research to be free to both authors and readers, emphasizing the importance of community and educational freedom. The recent recommendation from several science editors from reputed journals is just a symptomatic treatment for this deeply rooted issue of money.

OAP was created to solve a barrier of accessibility but unfortunately has created new ethical issue. While these are exciting changes, research is still based on a capitalistic system, creating a conflict of interest that is unlikely to change without substantial improvements or regulatory oversight from governments. Financial barriers continue to restrict access to crucial academic resources. OA, in its attempt to solve the issue of accessibility, has flipped the problem, excluding potential authors from contributing to the scientific conversation. As science leans toward OAP, solutions are needed to ensure equal opportunities for all. Scientific research needs to be built on a system where neither readers nor authors face a financial burden when spreading knowledge globally or learning.

N.B.: ChatGPT was used only in editing the final version of paper and only for typo and grammatical mistakes correction.

Jane Montague, BS, is a first year medical student at Nova Southeastern University's Dr Kiran C. Patel, College of Allopathic Medicine (NSUMD), and Vijay Rajput, MD, MACP, FRCP(Edin.), is Professor & Chair, Department of Medical Education at Nova Southeastern University's Dr Kiran C. Patel, College of Allopathic Medicine (NSUMD).

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A few months ago, one of my graduate students completed a very useful paper on the ethics of disease eradication using vaccination. I felt it worthy of publication and so we began to talk about possible academic journal outlets. We looked over a few, decided on one and got the manuscript ready to submit. As he was about to submit, my young collaborator asked how we were paying the requisite manuscript charge. Without really thinking about it I said I would cover the fee, meaning through my Division of Medical Ethics. I nearly had a heart attack when, upon revision and acceptance, I realized I was facing a bill for around $3500.

My field, unlike some others, does not often get grants that will cover page charges. A large number of investigators do. Or, in some cases, their national governments or institutions will pay if they see prestige benefits.

Those getting charged have little incentive to worry about outrageous charges when third parties foot the bill. And, though they should, they aren’t.

A quick survey by my research assistant, Rachel Abraham, produced the following data on some major publishers’ fees to publish in their journals:

Taylor & Francis: List price Article Processing Charges (APCs) across their journals range from $600 to $4,800ⁱ

Elsevier: full-length articles: High: $10,400; several at $9,350; Low: $200ⁱⁱ

Wiley: High: $6,730; Low: $790ⁱⁱⁱ

A guide to Open Access publishing from UCSF lists the average fee as $3,000. Still, when there is a charge over $10,000—that is simply nuts!^iv

Let’s take a look at how one publisher, Springer, is doing businesswise to justify its APCs. The company expects full-year revenue of €1.82bn-€1.85bn, and adjusted operating profit of €505m-€520m. Relx, the parent company of scholarly publisher Elsevier, is also publicly listed. Last year it reported that its scientific, technical and medical unit, which includes Elsevier, made an adjusted operating profit of £1.17bn on revenue of £3.06bn, for a margin of 38 per cent. Chief executive Frank Vrancken Peeters said: “We are well positioned to continue to outgrow the market, achieve our targets and deliver for the communities we serve. We will keep investing in technology solutions to support researchers, enhance the publishing process and help accelerate solutions to the world’s urgent challenges.”^v

The big for-profits seem to be doing very well!

Decades ago, the ethical challenge of academic publishing in health care and related fields like nutrition, dentistry and pharmacy was the prominence of pharmaceutical drug and device advertising aggressively promoting products to readers.^vi  That world evolved into today with pharma advertising endlessly directly to viewers of television and social media—cutting out the middleman and going right for the patient. So where does that leave biomedical journals?

Academic journals historically had two ways to survive: subscription charges and advertisements. For awhile libraries carried outsized subscription charges but few today remember libraries. In response to ethical concerns about undue industry influence, journals began to appear offering open access for a fee. Article processing charges began to replace some advertising and declining subscriptions. The ethics of publishing and the trustworthiness of content should have improved—but it didn’t.

Academic biomedicine and bioethics now face three core challenges to their work. One is fundamental inequity in accessing journals by those who can’t pay. Having authors beg for discounts and waivers is both undignified and unfair. Second, payment of huge fees encourages the proliferation of journals to attract high fees. It also encourages the pollution of peer review as many predatory journals now exist promising rapid ‘guaranteed’ peer reviewed publication for the proffered fee, a promise that is conflicted on its face. And lastly public funds, tax exempt funds and gift monies ought not be used to support for-profit business ventures. Monies allocated for science were never intended to cover exorbitant publishing charges.  Diverting them to such purposes means less beneficial public science and more profiteering at public expense.

What are the alternatives? I am not sure.  But it is long past the time to figure them out given the current ethically dubious environment.

Arthur L. Caplan, PhD is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health.

ⁱSource: https://taylorandfrancis.com/our-policies/open-access-pricing/ 
"Flexible funding" options:

• Waivers or discounts of up to 100% if corresponding authors are based in low or lower-middle income economies.
• Discounts of up to 100% where a professional member association or learned society provide additional support.
• Discounts due to their organization’s participation in a membership scheme or transformative agreement, which usually allow researchers to submit without any individual payment on their part.

ⁱⁱSome fees waived/charged directly by journal/sponsored by a third party
Source: https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/pricing#1-publishing-charges

Discounts: "We grant waivers in cases of genuine need, therefore we automatically apply APC waivers or discounts to those articles in gold open access journals for which all author groups are based in a country eligible for the Research4Life program. When publishing in fully open access journals, we fully waive all APCs for authors from 69 countries (Group A) and give a 50% discount for authors from 57 countries (Group B).

If an author group from a non-Research4Life country cannot afford the APC to publish an article in a gold open access journal and they can demonstrate they had no research funding, we will consider individual waiver requests on a case-by-case basis....

For patients and caregivers, we will consider individual waiver requests on a case-by-case basis."

  
ⁱⁱⁱSource: https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/article-publication-charges/index.html
Discounts: Wiley recommends authors contact societies they belong to for member discounts, and offers automatic waivers or discounts to corresponding authors from many different countries (see list: https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/open-access/article-publication-charges/waivers-and-discounts.html)

^ivhttps://osr.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra1766/f/UCSF%20Open%20Access%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

^vSource: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-world-2024-11-springer-nature-reports-adjusted-operating-profit-margin-of-28/

^vihttps://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0030130&type=printable

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Since “Project Professionalism” was launched with the lofty goal of promoting “integrity in medicine” in 1995 its foundational tenant has been an informal but presumably collaborative social contract between governments, corporations, and medical professionals (Koch 2019). Even those who have criticized professionalism as a standard for medical education and practice have accepted uncritically the idea of a contractual association.

A metaphorical contract (nothing written or negotiated) is problematic, however, not the least because the goals of the presumed partners are certainly distinct. The goals of business, maximizing profits while minimizing costs, and of governments charged with the care of populations are not the same. Neither necessarily aligns with either the traditions of medicine or  a modern “ethics of care” (Tronto 1994).

Before the 1980s, medical ethics was grounded in a bottom-up, vision of relational practice and social responsibility articulated in the Hippocratic Oath. First invoked by students at the beginning of their training, and later at convocations, the primary responsibility of practitioners was first, care of the patient (“Into whatever house I go …”), non-malfeasance (“I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm…”) and justice (“into whatsoever houses I enter …”) (NIH 2020). Implied in the Oath and stated elsewhere in the Corpus, physicians were charged as educated citizens to be advocates for healthy environments and the societies in which they practiced (Lasagna 1962).

Beginning in the 1970s, bioethics sought successfully to replace the Hippocratic vision with a a top-down, commercial and individualistic ethic.  What resulted was a “…fundamental ethos of medicine, which has produced an individualistic, consumerist, science-worshiping form of medical practice” (Elliott 2021). In this new alignment “the market was treated as a moral, not just an efficiency value … little interested in the common good” (Callahan 2012, 132-133). The market is rarely altruistic or beneficent, however, its calculus more a matter of quarterly and annual balance sheets than the needs of the individual or the greater needs of society or the person. Uncritically promoting an unwritten contract with government and business (Cruess and Cruess 2000), Professionalism accepted as given “afflictions of inequality” inherent in the unhealthy and unjust societies that resulted (Wilkinson 1996).

In the traditional Hippocratic ethic, individuals had an intrinsic value as members of the wider whole rather than as isolated entities (Smith 2000, 182). Service to the person was understood to be service to society-at-large. Bioethics inverted those priorities setting the practitioner’s first priority to the needs of society, defined by business and government, rather than the person in care (Callahan 1987). Embracing the unwritten contract as the groundwork for contemporary medicine, Professionalism accepted the primacy of officialdom’s needs and limits rather than the advocacy of care, individual and social, in the earlier ethical framework.

Physicians have always practiced within the economic and social realities of a society but with the accepted traditional ethics of practice stood apart from it. Practitioners thus were free, and some believed obliged, to argue for reforms as critics of official agendas and policies (Koch 2012, 35-36). By accepting as givens both commercial and official agendas, medicine’s traditional “guardianship function” (Jacobs1992) for society and the individual was lost. Gone was the Enlightenment ideal of practitioners as “military police” overseeing society’s healthful goals (Hamlin 1998, 191).

The result has been a constant conflict in those believing in the primacy of a vocational ethic of care. “It is something of a miracle that most physicians remain faithful to their professional [Hippocratic] values in a system that does all it can to turn them into better businessmen which in fact they must be to fit into the health care system” (Callahan 2012, 184). Many have made clear the dilemma that results. “We’re trained in our schooling to give our best possible care to our patient regardless of race or gender but then we meet the real world where it’s about insurance companies, bottom line, the hospital’s revenues … it’s all about throughput” (Damania 2019).

It is thus no surprise that surveys conducted prior to the Covid-19 pandemic reported a general sense of low personal accomplishment among an increasing number of experienced physicians and nurses (Rotenstein, Torre, Ramos et al. 2018, 1131). In 2019 The National Academy of Sciences called it an “epidemic of dissatisfaction” among practitioners exhausted by a sense of depersonalization in increasingly bureaucratic and commercialized practices. The predictable result was a sense of “burnout” at 67 percent of physicians surveyed. The realities of the recent pandemic—overcrowded wards and a lack of service equipment—may have exacerbated but clearly did not cause this sense of practitioner disenchantment and malaise (Koch 2025, 302-303).

*This report is condensed from Seeking Medicine’s Moral Centre: Ethics, Bioethics, and Medical Assistance in Dying. Cambridge, UK: Ethics Press, 2025. https://ethicspress.com/products/seeking-medicines-moral-centre.

Tom Koch, PhD, is a medical ethicist, gerontologist, and geographer at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of 15 previous books including Ethics of Everyday Life: Mapping Moral Stress, Distress, and Injury. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

References:
Beauchamp, T. L. and J. F. Childress. 2001. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th Ed. NY: Oxford University Press.

Callahan D. 1987. Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society. NY: Touchstone Books.

Callahan, D. 2012. In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cruess S.R., Cruess R.L.2000.  Professionalism: A Contract between Medicine and Society CMAJ162: 668e9.

Damania Z. 2019. It’s not burnout, it’s moral injury. (Mar 18). YouTube. https://youtube.be/L_1PNZdHq6Q.

Elliott C. 2021. Sisyphus Gets a Prescription: Doomed to Wellness. Hedgehog Review 23 (3). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356732515_Sisyphus_Gets_a_Prescription.

Hamlin J. Pubic Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick. Britain, 1800-1854. NY: Cambridge University Press.

Jacobs J. 1992. Systems of Survival: A Dialogue o on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics. New York: Vintage books.

Koch T. 2012. Thieves of Virtue: When Bioethics Stole Medicine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Koch T. Professionalism: An Archaeology. HEC Forum 2009; 31 (3): 219-232. DOI 10.1007/s10730-019-09372-w.

Koch T. 2025. Seeking Medicine’s Moral Centre: Ethics, Bioethics, and MAiD. Cambridge, UK: Ethics Press.

Lasagna L. 1962. Hippocratic Oath: Modern Version. PBS: Nova. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_modern.html.

NIH. 2020.The Hippocratic Oath, W.H.S. Jones, Trans. www.nlm.nih.gov. National Library of Medicine – NIH. Retrieved 29 July 2020.

Rotenstein L. S., Torre, M. Ramos M.A., Rosales R. C. et al. 2018. Prevalence of Burnout among Physicians: A Systematic Review. JAMA 320; 11: 1130-1150. 50.

Smith D.M. 2000. Moral Geographies: Ethics in a World of Difference. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Tronto J. C. 1994. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. London: Routledge.

Wilkinson R. G.1996. Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality. NY: Routledge.

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Enhancing Educational Interactions by Exploring Motivational Styles with Gurjit Sandhu

This presentation examines interpersonal interactions in medical education, particularly in high-stakes environments such as surgical training, where trust, teaching agility, and effective communication are essential for success. As the community of healthcare professionals continues to diversify, it is crucial to consider how individual professional identities shape teaching, entrustment, feedback, and collaboration in these interactions. In particular, the concordance and discordance of motivational styles, as a key aspect of professional identity, will be explored in the context of interpersonal dynamics and their impact on learning and performance.

Register at: https://bit.ly/APHCRoundtables

Gurjit Sandhu is a Surgical Education Scientist and Professor in the Department of Surgery and in the Department of Learning Health Sciences at the University of Michigan. She serves as the Director for the Center for Surgical Training and Research (CSTAR) in the Department of Surgery, University of Michigan and is the national Director for the Surgical Education Research Fellowship (SERF) through the Association for Surgical Education (ASE). Her research focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning, specifically looking at professional education, teaching methods, intraoperative entrustment, and the educational environment. She uses her strengths as a qualitative researcher to support study of social accountability in medical education, health equity and disparities, and physician wellness.

Roundtables are for APHC Members only.
Check out our membership benefits here.

Join APHC to access previous Roundtable recordings.

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Physicians interested in doing a deeper academic study of the medical humanities consider this new hybrid certificate training program offered by the University of Texas Health Houston McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics.  Click here to learn more.

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The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Call for Sessions and Posters for live presentation at ABMS Conference 2025 is now open. As the premier health care conference on board certification with a focus on assessment, lifelong learning, improvement, and professionalism, ABMS Conference 2025 is an excellent opportunity to share innovative collaborations, evidence-based research, and best practices that accelerate the transformation of certification and delivery of high-quality care.

ABMS Conference 2025 will be held September 17–19 at the Westin Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. The ABMS Conference Program Planning Committee seeks high-quality submissions that meet the continuing professional development needs of attendees and aligns with one or more of the ABMS Conference priorities.

Individuals and/or organizations are welcome to submit more than one abstract; each abstract must be submitted separately. All accepted submissions will be presented in person and presenters will be required to register for ABMS Conference 2025.

Abstracts for sessions and posters must be submitted by Sunday, March 9, 2025. Acceptance notifications will be sent via email by Friday, May 9, 2025. Additional information regarding session and poster presentation requirements and submission instructions may be found at Call for Sessions and Posters.

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Professional Formation and APHC collaborate on a podcast, Healthcare Professionalism: Education, Research & Resources.

Over 125 podcast episodes have been released with over 17,000 downloads.

Released every other Saturday morning, recent episodes include Rachel Pittmann discussing Telehealth Etiquette and Amal Khidir talking about Designing the Faculty Development Professionalism Program with Multi-cultural Perspectives.

You can access the podcast episodes on your favorite platform or at: https://bit.ly/PF-APHC-Podcast

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As a member, you have access to special benefits that include:

• Belonging to a community of like-minded professionals
• Participating in the monthly Professionalism Education
  Roundtables with authors, faculty, and researchers, plus accessing past recordings
• Accessing 15 Professional Formation modules for individuals for free
• Enrolling in the APHC Faculty Development Certificate program known as LEEP (Leadership Excellence in Educating for Professionalism), which was launched in 2020 and offers longitudinal mentoring for a select group of
  individuals seeking to deepen their knowledge and skills in
  professionalism education, assessment, and research
• Posting your research, articles, podcasts, webinars, conferences, and books in the newsletter distributed to about 15,000 people
• Receiving a 20% discount on educational videos created by the Medical Professionalism Project, which also allows you to obtain MOC and CME
• Registering for APHC conferences with discounts
• Participating in APHC committees, which include the conference program, membership, and education committees

Our annual membership fees are very inexpensive and are valid for one year from the payment date. Select from seven types of membership, including the institutional membership for four people. See the descriptions.

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Editor-in-Chief: Bryan Pilkington | Managing Editor: Yvonne Kriss

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