Professions & Professionalisation Flashcards
What is professionalisation?
A profession is a type of occupation able to make distinctive claims about its work practices and status
A professional is a member of a profession
- May or may not involve formal registration
Professionalisation describes the social and historical process that results in an occupation becoming a profession
How has medicine become professionalised?
Doctors acted as an elite group, only catering for the wealthy
Established control over market and exclusion of competitors
Need for control over professional work practice:
- GMC formed in 1858 by the Medical Act, giving the GMC power over the registration of doctors
- Traditional model of professional self-regulation
What is professional socialisation?
The process through which new entrants acquire their professional identities:
Formal curriculum - knowledge, tested through exams
Informal curriculum - Attitudes & beliefs, Performance noted
Not just about gaining technical competence but absorbing norms & values too
What is self-regulation? (In regards to doctors)
Self-Regulation claims that there is such an unusual degree of skill and knowledge involved in professional work that non-professionals are not equipped to evaluate or regulate it
What criticisms of self-regulation are there?
Claims of virtue seen as self-serving, strategic manoeuvre
Favours the interests of “agents” over “principals”
Like having to trust a mechanic (agent) with your car (principal)
Bad Apple enquiries – E.g. Bristol enquiry, Harold Shipman
Rules on profession propriety - Doctors discouraged from raising concerns about each other
Control is mostly informal - e.g. quiet chats
What is the primary role of the GMC?
To protect patients
Not a representative body for doctors
What brought about the end of self-regulation of doctors?
Government used to leave running of NHS up to doctors Insufficiently responsive (election of previously struck off doctor) Publication of Tomorrow's Doctor's (1993)
Who is the GMC now made up of?
Mix of lay & professional members
All members appointed independently
Overseen by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence
Civil rather than criminal standard of proof
What is fitness to practice?
Concerns about a doctor’s fitness to practice -referred to the GMC
Impaired fitness to practice can arise by reason of misconduct, criminal caution or conviction, physical or mental illness, or a ruling by a regulatory body
GMC can be overruled in Fitness to Practice matters by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence
What is licensing?
Previously you stayed on the register unless actively removed
From now on, all doctors have to hold a licence, revalidated every 5 years
