"Physicianship" is a term coined by the McGill University Faculty of Medicine in the mid 1990's to describe a need to balance healing and professionalism in Medicine. Whereas healing was a traditional and powerful archetypal function of the physician, professionalism was an aspect of medicine that came out of the Middle Ages and pertained to "learned professions," all of which had rigorous, detailed training standards and examinations for membership in the profession. As the profession of medicine has experienced tremendous pressures from technological and industrial changes, the demands for training the professional have increased tremendously. McGill's then Dean, Dr. Richard Cruess, created a presentation about physicianship that included the following slide which portrays the relationship of the healer and the professional:

Dean Cruess emphasized the importance of the healer as the primary role of the physician because it focused on helping the patient become whole. This put professionalism that organizes the delivery of complex services including that of the healer in the service of healing. A physician who is not a professional can not practice good medicine; so these two qualities of the physician need to coexist in dynamic balance... for the benefit of all concerned.

When one considers the tremendously powerful forces of industrialization, finance, and science that tend to turn life into an objective phenomenon, the challenge to validate, support, and sustain the subjective qualities of life looms large today. However, it is only by accepting the challenge that the individual patient can be validated and cared for. A growing body of evidence indicates that care must be brought in to all medical practice in order for that practice to be at its highest level of effectiveness. The challenge before all of medicine is, then, to restore care to healthcare.

(Essay on Physicianship by Ken Hamilton, MD)