Today’s Professionalism: Engaging the Mind but Not the Heart

The author argues that today’s culture of medicine is hostile to altruism, compassion, integrity, fidelity, self-effacement, and other traditional qualities. Hospital culture and the narratives that support it often embody a set of professional qualities that are diametrically opposed to virtues that are explicitly taught as constituting the “good” doctor. Young physicians experience internal conflict as they try to reconcile the explicit and covert curricula, and they often develop nonreflective professionalism. Additional courses on professionalism are unlikely to alter this process. Instead, the author proposes a more comprehensive approach to changing the culture of medical education to favor an approach he calls narrative-based professionalism and to address the tension between self-interest and altruism. This approach involves four specific catalysts: professionalism role-modeling, self-awareness, narrative competence, and community service.