ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the professional development of physicians by highlighting the manner in which an initial service orientation and development of a specialized body of knowledge resulted in power and status in American society. It describes the development of medicine as a profession. The chapter evaluates the socialization of medical students into the medical profession. It also identifies the power structure of hospitals. The social importance of the medical function and the limited number of people with the training to perform as physicians are not the only criteria explaining their professional status. One of the most significant guiding principles of the American Medical Association (AMA) had been its view of the physician as an independent practitioner, largely free of public control, who engages in private medical practice on a fee-for-service basis. The professionalization of medicine would not have been possible without the control over the standards for medical education.
