The short history and tenuous future of medical professionalism: the erosion of medicine’s social contract.

The present social contract is one-dimensional, overly simplistic, and failing to sustain the public’s trust. To address these problems, a renewed social contract is necessary. Although this renewed contract should be based on foundations similar to the original, it must directly confront such contemporary challenges as resource allocation and conflicts of interest. Equally as important, to reinvigorate our social contract more physicians will need to come to grips with a basic truth: to sustain professionalism we need a strong, unified professional association.