ABSTRACT
HEALING POWER In medicine, the doctor and patient necessarily have vastly different socially constructed power – one is well, the other sick. One has specialized knowledge and the other is bewildered with a narrative dilemma.1, 2 One has cultural authority and the other is vulnerable. Such differential power can of course be used or abused. The social contract that regulated this power became known as professionalism – the power was only to be used for the good of the patient. This chapter reviews some of the social changes that have made what we have previously known as professionalism obsolete and challenges all of us to understand the new dynamics of professional power.
