Physicianship
restoring the healer’s art to the profession of medicine.
(Physicianship
essay)
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"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.
(Physicianship
essay)
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