ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I argue that we may soon be entering a post-professional era in healthcare, in which the established and orthodox healthcare professionals lose much of the social capital that they acquired in the last century. With the profound changes now taking place in the technologically mediated, postmodern and globalised twenty-first century, professions like medicine, nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy and occupational therapy may be profoundly affected by changes now taking place in the cultural, economic, philosophical, political and social discourses informing social structures in developed and developing economies around the world. New forms of knowledge, new modes of engagement and new social relations are emerging around health and well-being that may have a profound effect on the way in which healthcare is structured and ordered in the future. In this chapter, I explore how arguments advocating for greater inter- and trans-disciplinary knowledge sharing are being mobilised to promote the idea of the generalist practitioner, at the expense of the expert specialist. I explore how little impact these arguments are yet having on the orthodox health professions, arguing that they fail to address some fundamental questions about the kinds of healthcare that people will need in the future. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of that post-professional healthcare may develop in the future; modes that address the issues facing the health professions more adequately than are currently being explored by generalists.
