The Role of Consumers in Defining Health Professionalism

Posted on | February 1, 2010 | Comments Off on The Role of Consumers in Defining Health Professionalism

Mike Magee

Here is the question: In a modern preventive and prospective health care system, supported by the relationship between the people and the people caring for the people, should the consumer help define health professionalism and continually assess health professionals performance as defined by this code?

In the previous four segments of this deep dive into what I term “Advanced Professionalism”, we’ve looked at the labels used to define “Professionalism”, questioned whether the health care system was determining who we were becoming, looked at the high minded vision embodied in the Tavistock Principles and wondered what had become of them, and explored whether thought leaders who support transformation of the system were having limited success due to “under-visioning”. In the last piece I offered three visions which I believed were “sufficiently powered” to support a full bodied transformation upon which modern “advanced professionalism” might be based. These included: pursuing health as a personalized, prospective strategic planning endeavor; centering healthy delivery systems around creation of healthy homes; and moving health delivery teams toward these homes rather then moving patients and families out of homes toward hospitals and health professionals’ offices. (1,2,3,4) (CONTINUE…)