Chapter 13 - Ethical foundations of professionalism

Summary

The ethics of healthcare professions should result from the ethics and experience of providing and receiving healthcare itself. The illness, healthcare and the act of profession provide the core of ethical values and norms. The social contract approach differs and encourages ethics related to stakeholders as well. This chapter argues that ethics must go beyond being platitudes or powerless ideals. A major challenge within the profession is to maintain a holistic ethical perspective within healthcare delivery. Ethics is central to what makes medicine a profession. Society confers an honoured status and the privilege of self-regulation on medicine only to the degree to which it believes that physicians possess distinctive skill at healing and embody a uniquely altruistic ethical orientation. The religious and existential sources of professional ethics are relatively timeless and independent of the particular culture.