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Where Is the Virtue in Professionalism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2003

DAVID J. DOUKAS
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities Task Force on Graduate Medical Education in Bioethics and Humanities

Extract

There is a wind of change about to affect the training of all house officers in the United States. The Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has promulgated a set of general competencies for all U.S.-trained residents, with a major thrust focused on bioethics and professionalism that will likely catch residency directors unaware. The ACGME's General Competencies document globally addresses many relationship-based ethical roles and responsibilities of house officers in healthcare. Of note, this document contains a specific section on professionalism. However, the entire document is woven with a sustained thread of medical ethics throughout its other sections. The intent is to imbue each physician with those skills, rules, and aspects of character that will be a foundation for humane, ethical, professional conduct. Professionalism does indeed go beyond ethical principles, accounting for competency and commitment to excellence and, most of all, implying a virtue ethics account of medical practice. The need to address the central place of virtue ethics in house-staff education is apparent, and we now have the right tool for the job—the ACGME General Competencies.

Type
SPECIAL SECTION: RESPONDING TO THE CALL OF PROFESSIONALISM
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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