Professional practice and individual responsibility in the health professions

– historical development and ethical principles

Abstract

The healthcare sector is increasingly challenged in terms of recruiting and retaining professional practitioners. A contributing factor may be new paradigms where professional pride, sense of responsibility, and commitment in job performance are gradually replaced by fear of mistakes, deviance from norms, and disciplinary disgrace. This article reviews the historical development of some basic ethical principles for the health professions and the link between these principles and the responsibility imposed on practitioners through law. The article describes how the understanding of professional ethics and individual responsibility in the health professions traditionally has reached far beyond the question of fault-finding and enforcement of conformity. More fundamentally, the principles of professional ethics, in addition to protecting the patient from harm, encourage efforts to help all patients in a good and proper way, with due regard for the patient’s right to self-determination. A contemporary formulation of health professionals’ legal responsibilities could naturally take this as a starting point. The article advocates for a more faceted perspective on health professionals’ responsibilities and contributes to a knowledge-based critical reconsideration of the unfortunate paradigms that today’s health professionals may be facing.