Professionals

Outside the medical profession, there are various efforts to cut medicine down to size: not only widespread malpractice litigation and massive governmental regulation, but also attempts by consumer groups and others to redefine medicine as a trade rather than as a profession, and the physician as merely a technician for hire under insufficient; publicly declaring devotion to plumbing or auto repair would not turn these trades into professions.

Some believe that learning and knowledge are the diagnostic signs of a profession. For reasons probably linked to the medieval university, the term “profession” has been applied to the so-called learned professions—medicine, law, and theology—the practices of which are founded upon inquiry and knowledge rather than mere “know-how.” Yet it is not of the learned variety, but its professional quality is rooted in something else.

Some mistakenly seek to locate that something else in the prestige and honor accorded professionals by society, evidenced in their special titles and the special deference and privileges they receive. But externalities do not constitute medicine a profession. Physicians are not professionals because they are honored; rather, they are honored because of and in that which warrants and impels making a public confession to a way of life.

Professing oneself a professional is an ethical act because it is not a silent and private act, but an articulated and public one; because it promises continuing devotion to a way of life, not merely announces a present preference or a way to a livelihood; because it is an activity in service profession engages one’s character and heart, not merely one’s mind and hands.