ABSTRACT
A wind is rising and strong currents are flowing around the pillars of science and service. As physician-healers moved medicine from superstition to science, professionalism, evolving from the Hippocratic Oath, blended with the healing arts as a modulating influence. Among the core competencies, professionalism is the most critical and among the most difficult to quantify. As Cruess and Cruess have pointed out, the place of physicians in a contemporary, complex society is determined by the degree to which they fulfill the related roles as healer and as professional. Healing is well taught during medical school and residency; the other area of accountability – professionalism – which protects and informs the role of the healer, has received relatively little formal attention. The corporate sector, with its profit-based modus operandi, became by the 1990s the dominant player in the delivery of health care – diminishing the role of physicians and professional organizations.
