Main description:

In this collection of essays, the authors don't argue with those attributes deemed to be the essence of professionalism in medicine. Instead, they ask questions of the discourse from which they arise, how the specialized language of academic medicine disciplines has defined, organized, contained, and made seemingly immutable a group of attitudes, values, and behaviors subsumed under the label "professional" or "professionalism." This collection aims to be a critical text, one that questions the profession's beliefs about the nature of its work and how such beliefs are enacted (or not) in medical education, particularly as they fuel the professionalism discourse.

Contents:

Introduction.- Part One.- Conceptualizing Professionalism.- The Complexities of Medical Professionalism: A Preliminary Investigation.- An Analysis of the Discourse of Professionalism.- Professionalism: Curriculum Goals and Meeting Their Challenges.- Part Two.- Teaching Professionalism.- Medical Professionalism: The Nature of Story and the Story of Nature.- Patient Respect: A Case Study of the Formal and Hidden Curriculum.- You Say Self-Interest, I Say Altruism.- The Role of Ethics within Professionalism Inquiry: Defining Identity and Distinguishing Boundary.- Medical Professionals and the Discourse of Professionalism: Teaching Implications.- Part Three.- Assessing Professionalism.- Educating for Professionalism at Indiana University School of Medicine: Feet on the Ground and Fresh Eyes.- The Problem with Evaluating Professionalism: The Case against the Current Dogma.- How Medical Training Mangles Professionalism: The Prolonged Death of Compassion.- Wit is Not Enough.- Professionalism and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.- Coda .- List of Contributors.- Index .