Professionalism: A key to weathering the storm

The President's Program at the 2000 Annual Clinical Meeting of ACOG address ed the question of how best to maintain professional values in the current, market-driven health care environment. The author's presentation during th at presidential program provided the basis of this article. In today's corp orate environment, the distinction between the practice of medicine and the business of medicine has become blurred, Too often, market values prevail over traditional professional values. As a consequence, physicians face inc reasing challenges and frustrations. To ease the discomfort of practicing i n a new corporate age, physicians must maintain medical professionalism and hence reassert the primacy of professional values in caring for patients. Individually, physicians must exercise professionalism in their roles as ed ucators and practitioners. Collectively, the profession of medicine must ex ercise professionalism by advocating patients' interests and by accepting a ccountability for both long-established and emerging obligations that physi cians have to their patients and to society. (C) 2001 by the American Colle ge of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.