2025 Building Trust Essay Contest – Accepting Submissions
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January 31, 2025
Since 2022, the ABIM Foundation’s Building Trust Essay Contest has offered students of health professions an opportunity to share how they have or are building trust with their schools, faculty, peers, family, patients, and communities.
Explore past essay prompts and read winning essays.
2025 Prompt
As health professionals, trust forms the cornerstone of our relationships—with patients, colleagues, and communities. It is both the bedrock and the aspiration of medical professionalism. Defined as the daily expression of the desire to help people and society through quality health care (ABIM Foundation), medical professionalism embodies values that connect the purpose of medicine with the public’s expectations of care.
Today’s medical professionalism is evolving—from autonomy to accountability, from expert opinion to evidence-based practice, and from self-interest to teamwork and shared responsibility. For many, professionalism represents the “heart and soul of medicine,” reflecting the ideals that inspired them to enter the field. Yet, profound obstacles often stand in the way of realizing these ideals, ranging from personal challenges to systemic barriers.
In a shifting medical landscape, the concept of professionalism is being reimagined to address both new opportunities and persistent challenges. Criticisms from within medicine include concerns that professionalism is being leveraged to impose undue work burdens or assessed in ways that disadvantage underrepresented individuals. Externally, the erosion of trust in medical expertise and science poses additional threats to the profession’s foundation.
The ABIM Foundation recognizes that trust and professionalism are deeply intertwined—trust serves as the foundation that enables professionalism to thrive, while professionalism actively cultivates trust through ethical behavior, accountability, and a commitment to patients and colleagues. In today’s health care landscape, the generational divide and shifting values challenge and redefine what professionalism means in practice.
As expectations evolve, tradeoffs are often necessary in service of transparency, collaboration, and work-life balance over autonomy, authority, or duty, for example. Where they exist, these differing priorities can create tension but also present opportunities for growth and innovation within the profession.
| We invite students of health professions to reflect on a personal experience where trust played a pivotal role in navigating these shifting values or generational dynamics. Through the lens of medical professionalism, share a story about a moment that shaped your understanding of trust—whether it involved a patient, mentor, team, or system. |
Consider these questions to guide your reflection:
- How did this experience influence your perception of professionalism in the context of generational or values differences in your profession?
- What values or actions were critical in building, maintaining, or restoring trust in the situation?
- How can your story inspire hope and bridge the gap between generations, fostering a shared commitment to the future of professionalism in health care?
Your story can highlight the evolving connection between trust and professionalism, offering insights into how health care professionals can navigate generational shifts while staying rooted in shared values that benefit patients and communities.
Submission Requirements
The Building Trust Essay Contest is open to students across all health professions (e.g., nursing, physical therapy, social work) in the United States. Submissions must be an original essay of 750 words or less. Essays must be written in English and only one submission per student will be accepted.
Selection Criteria
An independent panel of judges will review and select up to four winning essays. Up to 10 honorable mentions will also be awarded. Essays will be judged on the following equally weighted criteria:
- Connection to trust and professionalism themes in a reflective and meaningful way
- Quality of writing and clarity of thought
- Novelty of the message
- Opportunity for others to learn
The Prize
Up to four winners will each receive an invitation to the ABIM Foundation’s annual Forum (July 26-29, 2025, in San Diego, CA), which includes:
- Travel to and from San Diego, CA
- Three (3) nights lodging
- A stipend for meals and incidentals
Publication
Winning essays will be published on the ABIM Foundation’s website, BuildingTrust.org, shared on social media, and in newsletter(s).
Submissions will be accepted through April 2, 2025.
