This study evaluated cognition, core values and attributes of medical professionalism in occupational and environmental physicians, and was conducted to have basic data for suggesting proper role models of occupational and environmental physicians.

Perceptions of reality and the priority of professionalism virtues in occupational and environmental medicine were evaluated by using a self-administered questionnaire, completed by 109 occupational and environmental physicians in Korea. The physicians were divided into two sub-groups: the resident group and the board certified specialist group. There are 4 questions about perceptions of reality and survey respondents gave 5-scale scores to each of 10 professionalism virtues in the questionnaire. The statistical significance of the perception difference between two groups was given by a cross tabulation analysis. Priority difference between each 10 professionalism virtue between the two groups was analyzed through Student T-test by using the SPSS 17.0K program. Afterwards, the type of medical professionalism in occupational and environmental medicine was analyzed based on the results of the questionnaire.

This study provided us with the information that specialists had more optimistic views about reality of occupational and environmental medicine than residents. 10 virtues of medical professionalism were listed in the order of priority, highest to lowest. Occupational and environmental physicians valued 'technical competence', 'professional dominance', and 'morality', but 'altruism' had the lowest score.

This study demonstrated that the occupational and environmental physicians's type of medical professionalism didn't match any of the seven types of medical professionalism from Castellani & Hafferty, although 'empirical type', 'nostalgic type' were partially similar to the occupational and environmental physician's type of medical professionalism. This is assumed because the occupational and environmental medicine field is different from other clinical medicine in terms of the physician's role. Further studies and discussions are necessary for establishing a suitable model of medical professionalism for occupational and environmental physicians.