Volume 69 Number 6 November 2002	back to contents

Address correspondence to Rosemary A. Stevens, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Department of History and Sociology of Science, 303 Logan Hall, 249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304.

Presented at the Issues in Medical Ethics 2000 Conference at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY on November 3, 2000.

The author was a recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

ABSTRACT

Professionalism in medicine is an ambiguous term. Discussions are hampered by understandings of the past that are counterproductive to today’s debates. Three decades of criticism of physicians as self-interested and arrogant, and of professional organizations as unfairly monopolistic have shaken the confidence of professional leaders and their constituents in their ability to act as a positive social force, and left the concept of professional autonomy without a useful meaning. Inherited assumptions about conflict between the profession, government and the market have encouraged organizational policies to fight familiar enemies for short-term gains, rather than reinvent professionalism as a social force or seek new strategic alliances. This article stresses the importance of distancing the present from the past in re-inventing professionalism for the future, and lists eight fundamental goals.

KEYWORDS

Profession, professionalism, history, trends

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