(PRLeap.com) Winners of the ABIM Foundation's fifth annual Building Trust Essay Contest offer fresh perspectives on what professionalism in medicine should look like-grounded in listening, collaboration, humility, and human connection. This year's essayists explore how trust is built not only through clinical expertise but through the willingness to slow down, speak up, work across boundaries, and truly see the people at the center of care. The four winners - along with brief excerpts from their essays - are as follows:
In that moment, professionalism meant more than mastering the material. It meant taking responsibility for the limitations of the system I was being trained within. Speaking up carried risk: of being wrong, of slowing the discussion, of stepping outside the expected role of a learner. But remaining silent would have reinforced a different message-that these gaps were acceptable, or worse, invisible.
As a first-year medical student, my role in clinic was small: observing, listening, and occasionally helping organize chart information for ongoing research. But watching this interaction revealed something important about professionalism that I had not fully understood before. Professionalism is often taught as an individual virtue-integrity, accountability, respect. But in practice, professionalism can also function as a collective behavior: the willingness of clinicians to take responsibility for problems that technically fall outside their domain.
Faced with complex presentations, my instinct leaned toward assembling diagnostic checklists rather than spending longer at the bedside. Efficiency was rewarded, while listening, though still valued, was compressed by time pressures and full patient censuses. I began to expect answers from investigations rather than conversations.
The stool became, for me, a symbol of professional identity. It reminded me that medicine is not only the efficient application of evidence, but a moral practice grounded in trust. Trust built in moments that are easily cut short; the extra question, the pause after a patient's voice shakes. As a resident, I can't control hospital policy or reimbursement structures. I can't redesign the health care system. But I can choose how I inhabit my role within it. I can choose to sit.
"Trust is often built in quiet moments, when clinicians take the time to truly listen, connect, and see the humanity in the people they care for," said Jessica Perlo, MPH, Executive Vice President of the ABIM Foundation. "These essays show how rising leaders are helping to redefine what it means to be a health care professional today and are bringing new urgency to the values of compassion, accountability, humility, and trust."
Honorable mentions were awarded to four essayists:
Essays submitted by current and future physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and others from more than 50 institutions across the U.S. were reviewed and scored by a panel of judges from across the health care system.
Criteria included the (1) connection to trust and professionalism themes, (2) quality of writing, (3) novelty of the message, and (4) opportunity for others to learn.
Essay Contest Judges:
Full essays can be read here.
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Jaime McClennen
ABIM Foundation
http://www.abimfoundation.org
You can see the original version and more on PRLeap here: http://www.prleap.com/pr/312000/i-can-choose-to-sit-silence-carries-consequences-
