Can Spiritual Intelligence affect Professionalism in Medical Faculty Members?

Regarding to the importance of spiritual intelligence and professionalism infaculty development, this study aimed to determine the level of spiritualintelligence, the level of professional development and leadership, and performanceof professional responsibilities as two components of professionalism, and therelationship between spiritual intelligence and professionalism.This is a correlation cross-sectional study with 160 medical faculty members assubjects, which was defined base on stratified probability sampling in one ofthe medical universities in Iran. King’s modified spiritual intelligencequestionnaire and teaching competency self assessment instrument of AlabamaUniversity were used. Statistical tests such as t-test, two-way ANOVA, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal–Wallis, spearman and regressions were applied to analyze.P-value <0.05 was considered significant. The results showed that the mean score of spiritual intelligence was 63±1.2,which classifies as moderate. The median score of professional development andleadership was 9 with range between 4 and 12; and the median score of performanceof professional responsibilities was 17 with range between 5 and 20. There wasa significant relationship between spiritual intelligence and performance ofprofessional responsibilities (rs=0.23,p=0.003). There was no significant relationship between spiritualintelligence and professional development and leadership (rs=0.13, p=0.11). We found a significant relationship between spiritual intelligence and selfassessed professionalism components in performance of professionalresponsibilities dimension, indicating that spiritual intelligence can be thebasis for professional promotion.