ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relation of the profession to other occupations in health-related areas. It shows that the nature of the medical profession's occupational position is such as to order a great deal of the total environment of medical care both within and outside treatment. In order to dramatize the structural characteristics of the health-related division of labor the chapter compares professions with those of formally constituted bureaucratic organization. The chapter addresses when one characterizes rational—legal monocratic bureaucracies as wholes, looks at the total collection of workers among whom professionals are found in some organizations. It suggests that the division of labor has a social organization distinct from any external or artificial authority imposed on it by administrators. Most of the commonly cited attributes of professions may be seen either as consequences of their autonomy or as conditions useful for persuading the public and the body politic to grant such autonomy.
