What Ever Happened To The Tavistock Principles and the Role of Consumers in Defining Professionalism.

Posted on | January 21, 2010 | Comments Off on What Ever Happened To The Tavistock Principles and the Role of Consumers in Defining Professionalism.

Mike Magee MD

This week I continue my dive into “Advanced Professionalism”, a purposely disruptive process that explores whether it is possible to practice professionalism in a system with profound structural flaws in design, center of influence and measures of success.

A quick review. Two weeks ago I began with a list of “desirable attributes” in health professionals drawn from the University of Connecticut Health Systems website. This led me to other lists – from the ABIM, ACGME, & ABM – of values in Medicine; which in turn led me to a classic article “A Flag In The Wind” by Thomas Inui MD, while he was a Fellow at the AAMC, in which he challenged the use of value lists and suggested medical educators ask (on behalf of themselves and their students), “What are we becoming?”

I then added the additional questions:”Why am I becoming that?” ” What am I building, where, how and for whom?” And wondered aloud, “What if our mentors are able to ‘voice’ and ‘model’ professionalism, and even appear to be ‘practicing’ professionalism, but the system itself makes it impossible for them and for their students to ‘realize’professionalism?” I also injected remarks from Steven Schroeder MD, past president of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as well as reawakened my interest from the 80’s in W. Edward Deming.

I’ve not forgotten Deming and will comment more on him next week. The reason I delay is the Tavistock Principles. (TO CONTINUE …)