Physicians' perspectives on social competency education in academic medicine.

PURPOSE This study aims to explore the improvement of medical curriculums by examining the relationship between attributes of the Korean physicians and their needs for specialized departments and professionals for enhancing Korean physicians' social competence. METHODS The uniqueness of this study is in its conduction a survey about the Korean physicians' needs of specialized departments and professionals for physicians' social competence or not, unlikely that previous studies focused on reviews. Subjects of this study are 288 physicians among the members of the Korean Society of Medical Education and The Korea Intern Resident Association. The hierarchical regression analyses are conducted. RESULTS The authors present the results. First, the needs of specialized departments decline if physicians have ever majored on basic medical and learned professionalism ethics. Second, the older physicians are, the much more learned professionalism ethics and the needs of leadership competence physicians have, the necessities of specialized professionals are reduced. Finally, the physicians' needs of patient-oriented communication and sympathy of human in society as well as professionalism ethics increase recognitions of the importance of specialized professionals. CONCLUSION These results show that strengthening systemic and educators' individual capacity for successful social competence curriculums is important.