Student professionalism: art. no. 96

The purpose of this paper is to provoke thought in the pharmacy academy about the critical and comprehensive need to address professionalism. Several forces are driving the need for this conversation: the movement toward pharmaceutical care as the practice standard requires a higher level of professionalism from practitioners; critical issues with regard to current practice that address patient safety, workload, and shortages in our profession; and the sentiment that there has been a decline in the professionalism of our students over the last several years as well as within society in general. This paper will comprehensively review the concept of professionalism, its value to pharmacy practice, challenges to its development, factors necessary to support it, and recommendations to foster it in the academy and in practice. We hope this paper serves as a call to action for administrators, faculty, practitioners, and students to think and discuss critically professionalism in pharmacy education, as well as to stimulate additional work in this important area.