TEACHING PROFESSIONALISM - PASSING THE TORCH

Changes in medicine-brought on by health care reform will increasingly pressure physicians and physicians-in-training to: adopt business Or: trade strategies in-the name Of cost containment and of competition in the health care marketplace.:These strategies run directly counter to the professional standards and are a potential threat to medicine's s tatus as a profession. A challenge:for this generation of students is: not to let this emphasis on finances erode medicine's professionalism. Medical faculty :must ensure that their students properly:understand the nature of the relationships that permit medicine to enjoy the bene fits of being a profession (rather than a trade) and that they earn th e-appropriate balance between financial and professional consideration s. Faculty can and should place financial considerations in proper per spective. Students should learn the basic components:of professionalis m, how; physicians in the past have not always met the full criteria f or professionalism, how the current emphasis on cost-containment could threaten medicine's status as a profession, appropriate goals for hea lth care reform, the need to form new alliances to meet those goals, a nd criteria for forming appropriate alliances. Armed with this knowled ge, the generation of physicians now in training can:understand the de licate balance that must be maintained between financial exigencies an d professional imperatives. They will then be prepared to participate in the reform process, embrace its positive aspects, and argue effecti vely against its negative ones.