{
  "abstract": "Clinical Associates and Clinical Officers (CA/COs) play an increasingly important role in strengthening primary healthcare systems across Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in underserved and under-resourced communities. Despite their community-oriented mandate, professionalism within health professions education continues to be predominantly conceptualised through biomedical, competency-based, and individualised frameworks that prioritise observable behaviours and professional attributes. While valuable, these approaches may inadequately account for the historical, social, political, and relational dimensions of practice that shape healthcare delivery in contexts marked by colonial legacies, health inequities, and workforce shortages. This paper aims to explore how critical pedagogy can be used to critique and reimagine professionalism within CA/CO education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on the work of Paulo Freire, alongside scholarship from health professions education, decolonial theory, and professionalism studies, we undertake a conceptual analysis of dominant professionalism discourses and examine their applicability to the realities of CA/CO practice. Through the Freirean concepts of dialogue, praxis, and critical consciousness, as well as drawing from concepts of Ubuntu we propose an alternative conceptualisation of professionalism that is relational, contextual, political, and emancipatory. We argue that critical professionalism as a reimagined approach should extend beyond adherence to predefined competencies and behaviours towards a critically informed engagement with communities, health systems, and the structural conditions that influence health and healthcare. By foregrounding social accountability, equity, and contextually responsive practice, critical pedagogy offers a theoretically grounded approach for reimagining professionalism within CA/CO education. This perspective has implications for curriculum design, faculty development, professionalism assessment, and professional identity formation, whilst contributing to broader discussions regarding socially responsive and decolonially informed health professions education.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Unit for Undergraduate Medical Education (UUME), School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.",
    "Centre for Health Science Education, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa."
  ],
  "article_type": "discussion",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Esther Cele"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Nabeela Sujee"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dsd7hcpv0nnqf.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3389/fmed.2026.1983787",
  "fulltext_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13716645",
  "id": "dsd7hcpv0nnqf",
  "issns": [
    "2296-858X"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42959172",
  "language": "eng",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "heading",
      "Opinion"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2739|Innovations in Medical Education"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7222326048",
  "pdf_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13716645?pdf=render",
  "pmcid": "PMC13716645",
  "pmid": "42959172",
  "published": "2026-10-15",
  "publisher": "Frontiers Media SA",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dsd7hcpv0nnqf.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-01T00:20:52Z",
      "native_id": "MED:42959172",
      "source": "europepmc",
      "url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42959172"
    },
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-01T12:23:54Z",
      "native_id": "PMC13716645",
      "source": "pmc",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2026.1983787"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "openalex:2739|Innovations in Medical Education",
      "subfield": "epidemiology-public-health"
    }
  ],
  "title": "A critical pedagogy approach to reimagining professionalism in clinical associate/clinical officer training in Sub-Saharan Africa.",
  "title_text": "A critical pedagogy approach to reimagining professionalism in clinical associate/clinical officer training in Sub-Saharan Africa.",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-02T12:21:07Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dsd7hcpv0nnqf",
  "venue": "Frontiers in medicine",
  "versions": []
}