[Discussing and evaluating professional behaviour. 1. Academic Centre for Oral Health Groningen].

Professionalism is considered as a core competency for dentists. As a result of changes in the healthcare sector, it is becoming increasingly important for dentists to be more transparent to the community in their delivery of care. The ability'to provide justification' thus becomes an important skill. To train dentists to become professionals who can account for their actions, we developed an educational programme in Groningen which trains students in the following professional skills: 1. make explicit; 2. concretize; 3. analyze; 4. diagnose; 5. generalize; and 6. formulate learning points and experiment with them. This educational programme is given, under the supervision of a coach (generally a practicing dentist), during the entire curriculum, in small groups. Professionalism is integrated with other course programmes (work placement, working in the clinic), because professionalism is a competency which is only expressed by practicing other competencies. The professionalism of the student is also assessed.