Professionalism in Medicine

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Conceptualizing Professionalism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. The Complexities of Medical Professionalism

      • Brian Castellani, Frederic W. Hafferty

      Pages 3-23

   3. An Analysis of the Discourse of Professionalism

      • Jamie L. Shirley, Stephen M. Padgett

      Pages 25-41

   4. Professionalism

      • David J. Doukas

      Pages 43-59

3. Teaching Professionalism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 61-61

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   2. Medical Professionalism

      • Daniel George, Iahn Gonsenhauser, Peter Whitehouse

      Pages 63-86

   3. Respect for Patients

      • Delese Wear

      Pages 87-101

   4. You Say Self-Interest, I Say Altruism

      • Jack Coulehan

      Pages 103-127

   5. The Role of Ethics Within Professionalism Inquiry

      • Julie M. Aultman

      Pages 129-147

   6. Medical Professionals and the Discourse of Professionalism

      • Bradley Lewis

      Pages 149-161

4. Assessing Professionalism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 163-163

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   2. Educating for Professionalism at Indiana University School of Medicine

      • Thomas S. Inui, Ann H. Cottingham, Richard M. Frankel, Debra K. Litzelman, David L. Mossbarger, Anthony L. Suchman et al.

      Pages 165-184

   3. The Problem with Evaluating Professionalism

      • Mark Kuczewski

      Pages 185-198

   4. How Medical Training Mangles Professionalism

      • Cynthia A. Brincat

      Pages 199-210

   5. Wit is not Enough

      • Audiey Kao, Jennifer Reenan

      Pages 211-232

   6. Professionalism and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

      • Laura J. Fochtmann

      Pages 233-254

5. CODA

   1. CODA

      • David C. Leach

      Pages 255-259

6. Back Matter

   Pages 261-275

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Professionalism in Medicine: Critical Perspectives casts a careful, and at times wary, eye on a dominant force in contemporary academic medicine that appears to have been accepted as an absolute good. Calls for developing, increasing, or maintaining professionalism—not to mention the current obsession with evaluating or assessing it—appear with regularity in medical journals and conference programs of all stripes. The resultant literature has defined, organized, contained, and made seemingly immutable a group of attitudes and behaviors subsumed under the label "professional" or ''professionalism" (Wear & Kuczewski, 2004). Moreover, the fixation with assessment has become a new steering mechanism that is reductionistic when it shapes the total range of possible and thinkable dimensions of professionalism. The richness, complexity, and contradictions of professionalism in medicine are being flattened into categorical attitudes or behaviors that evaluators (whose professionalism is rarely assessed) can check. As Mark Kuczewski, one of the contributors to this volume, observes, "Valuing and evaluating professionalism seem to have become equated. " This preoccupation with assessment is not indigenous to medical education. It is arising and taking hold of many institutions as new principles—indeed, mandates—of scrutiny and examination become acceptable, if not desirable, cultural practices. In their incisive work on audit cultures in higher education. Shore and Wright (2000) argue that coercive practices of accountability sometimes sound eerily like moves toward "exhibiting" professionalism whereby "every individual is made acutely aware that [his] conduct and performance is under constant scrutiny" (p. 77).

• education
• ethics
• hospital
• internal medicine
• medicine
• morality

From the reviews:

"This text presents an interesting counterpoint to the body of perceived wisdom on professionalism. … The volume is most effective when it offers practical solutions to the current problems that they posit are facing the construct of professionalism and its delivery to medical students." (Alice Z. Frohna, Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 297 (19), 2007)

• Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, USA

  Delese Wear, Julie M. Aultman

Policies and ethics