The article by van Luijk and his associates in this issue (van Luijk et al. 2010) documents an admirable effort by those responsible for the education of future members of the professions of medicine, dentistry, and veterinary science to recognize the conceptual unity of professionalism and to identify the common elements of professionalism which they share. Based on the identification of these common elements, they developed recommendations for the teaching and evaluation of professionalism in the 12 separate schools responsible for the education of practitioners. The project was initiated by the Association of Cooperating Universities in the Netherlands, and thus represents a voluntary effort to pool their knowledge and intellectual capital to improve professional education. While these standards have not been codified into regulatory procedures and compliance is not compulsory, the exercise represents an admirable attempt to better meet societal needs by producing de facto national standards in the Netherlands. It is apparent from the data presented that the schools have responded to address the issue in a concerted fashion.
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