GoodWork Paper 8: Opportunities and Obstacles for GoodWork in Medicine

Author(s): Jeff Solomon, Jennifer DiBara, Sara Simeone, and Dan Dillon

Editor(s): Jeff Solomon, Series Editor

Media: Paper

Description: As part of a larger study of the professions in contemporary America, a pilot study of the domain of medicine was conducted. Subjects—primarily well established, prominent physicians in academic medical centers—were asked to comment on trends and developments impacting the domain on a broad scale. The study sought to understand how practicing physicians adhere to the fundamental principles of the profession at a time when a variety of external pressures make it is increasingly difficult to do so. Some of what subjects described is known to the well-informed general public. But they also identified a cluster of issues that are not headline-grabbing and yet are reshaping—and may continue to reshape—the provision of patient care for the foreseeable future. The paper concludes that the profession of medicine is currently at a crossroads between the private, autonomous, personal practitioners of the past and future physicians, whose role is not yet clear. Many fear that being a physician in this day and age is qualitatively different than in the past, and that the profession itself is changing from one of a calling to that of a job.