This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (14)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Medical Practice  • Medical Ethics  • Medical Practice, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Arnold S. Relman, MD

JAMA. 2007;298(22):2668-2670.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Medical professionalism in the United States is facing a crisis, just as serious as the crisis facing the health care system, and the 2 crises are interrelated.

To understand today's crisis in medical professionalism requires knowing what a profession is and what role it plays in modern society. Freidson¹ considered a profession to be 1 of 3 options modern society has for controlling and organizing work. The other 2 options are the free market and management by organizations such as government or private businesses. Freidson suggested that medical work was totally unsuited for control by the market or by government or business and, therefore, the practice of medicine could only be conducted properly as a profession.

According to Freidson,¹ a profession is highly specialized and grounded in a body of knowledge and skills that is given special status in the labor force, its members are certified . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Departments of Medicine and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Professional Medical Associations and Their Relationships With Industry: A Proposal for Controlling Conflict of Interest
Rothman et al.
JAMA 2009;301:1367-1372.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Teaching the next generation of neurologists
Elkind
Neurology 2009;72:657-663.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Consumer-Driven Health Care May Not Be What Patients Need--Caveat Emptor
Berenson and Cassel
JAMA 2009;301:321-323.
FULL TEXT  

Invited Article: Professionalism in neurology: The role of law
Larriviere and Beresford
Neurology 2008;71:1283-1288.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Invited Article: Threats to physician autonomy in a performance-based reimbursement system
Larriviere and Bernat
Neurology 2008;70:2338-2342.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Baumol's Curse on Medicine
Neilson
J. Am. Soc. Nephrol. 2008;19:1049-1053.
FULL TEXT  

Medical Integrity Up in Smoke? Conflicts of Interest and the Lung Cancer Screening Controversy
Moy
The Oncologist 2008;13:474-476.
FULL TEXT  

Guest Authorship and Ghostwriting in Publications Related to Rofecoxib: A Case Study of Industry Documents From Rofecoxib Litigation
Ross et al.
JAMA 2008;299:1800-1812.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT