Through the years, people work and meet certain social obligations. That is the way the society we live in treats people as the product of the latter from one hand and obtaining, no doubt, knowledge, means to dwell, working skills and certainly, as a result of all formerly mentioned aspects, professionalism from the other.
Different social fields need different specific education and experience. But can any education become experienced? If the experience is the notion of being got only through work and constant practice, then the work and practice have to be based on some knowledge. And knowledge is a matter of education.
Professional educations vary from field to field of their application. Some of them need much time to learn, some do much less, but still, the issue to define this or that profession is the experience and, as a result, professionalism.
Many arguments are hard to differentiate between whether professionalism is a body of beliefs or it is the issue resulting from the practices of occupation.
Medicine is the policy of the state matter. And definitely, it should meet definite and concrete social obligations entrusted. And referring to Parson’s 1930 research, professions are structured by the social issues they are joined to. But passing through the years, one interesting aspect is emerging to worry about. If medicine is bordering on the edge of getting profit-oriented, then what is the way of the representatives of this profession. And the answer is apparent: the physicians are to become corporate officers. The tendency is up to this, but what makes a positive aspect of this tendency?
Health is a matter of society and of the state, of course. But there is one more factor affecting, or better to say forwarding the recovery is the power. It is not just some aspect of belief or another religious point. It is the turning point in the process of recovery. The power is the societal response to the disease, with its social aspect.
Medicine as a science can be and is shared into two massive parts: one, examining the illness, giving the prescription and guiding the process of the recovery and the other, giving aid during the process of recovery. And from this point of view, the prominence of nursing is evident.
One is not allowed to prescribe or to give any recovery instructions to a sick person unless he is qualified personnel, a physician. And what’s more, the physician must be an experienced one and a professional in his field.
Passing through the years, the medical profession has become professional dominant. It has got widely implemented through probably political aspects. It is a natural process when the group of professionals tries to concentrate their efforts on approaching professional results, lobbying it politically or in some other way. “It is clear that with the doctor glut, and the obsession with cost containment, physicians will, like other workers in their time and place, have to try to organize to protect their self-interest, and such rights must be protected” (Wolfe, 11).
But medical professional dominance aspects have become less dominant despite the American Medical Association efforts to lobby its interests. And now, only a minority of the practising physicians would prefer the trade unions. But the majority of the physicians state professional interests through the social aspects.
Then comes the other aspect of the illness; when the sick person should meet the qualified and in-time aid, it is the point of nursing.
Is nursing a profession or just the mean, an instrument for the sick person to get the qualitative help prescribed by the physician?
Modern encyclopedia Wikipedia gives such a definition to nursing:
“A science and an art that focuses on promoting quality of life as defined by persons and families, throughout their life experiences from birth to care at the end of life” (Wikipedia). So, from this definition, it is understood that nursing is the profession, and as the other professions, it should be treated as an educational subject and the professionalism gain through the experience.
Qualitative medicine is the field force of the state. “The medical Profession and Organizational Change: from professional dominance to countervailing power” by Donald Light re-issues Parson’s 1930 research in which all the professions are defined by the social frames they are applied in. And medicine, along with all the professions, is shaped according to its social usage and application.
Should any profession be result-oriented, especially those concerning people’s health? Definitely, yes.
The term professional medical care is associated with the physicians as a rule, but nursing is the profession as well, and it needs education as well as professional skills. Despite the common view that nursing is the point of extra help, nowadays, it is a means of qualified medical assistance.
In many countries, nursing is an issue of public policy, and along with the other professions, it is guided and governed by the state.
Nursing practice is the specific definition of what the would-be nurses should learn, know and gain to assist those who need help. The nursing educational paths vary from country to country, but the applicant should study the nursing theory, and all the knowledge is based on the nursing research guided by the nursing community.
Basically, relying on the nursing care plan, theory and practice the nursing meets definite social obligations from one point. And it involves into hard educational process to obtain certain results in work, and certainly get the professionalism.
Now, from one side of the disease, there is the professionalism of a doctor: prescribes and way of treatment; and the professionalism of the nurses. We have the triangle with the apexes positioned in the professionalism of the doctor, professionalism of the nurse and “professionalism” of the patient.
And what does the professionalism of the patient imply? Power. Of course, the treatment is the doctor’s issue and the nurse’s assistance, but the power a patient should possess during the treatment is the source for the recovery. And no matter what this power is based on.
The professionalism of the nurse is upon her nurse study, under the precise guidance of the nursing community, it is the assistance given through the social aspect and state governed programs and the physician professionalism is due to the global and, no doubt, social, medical programs.
And the power which the patient should pose can be based whether on the belief in the qualified medical help of the doctor, or, probably, on some help and psychological assistance of the nurse or probably the physical assistance f the latter.
Donald Light, in his handbook of Medical sociology, “The Medical Profession and Organizational Change: from professional dominance to countervailing power”, touches upon different aspects of the disease. The research shows the illness, health, human body through the global and critical interpretation. The book is the result of the author’s research of the experience of the physicians of many countries all over the world. It concerns the global illness problems, different types of diseases.
Along with the physical problems, the author touches upon the mental deviation of our society nowadays, such as homosexuality, alcoholism and other mental deviance. The book recalls great medical problems of the up-to-dateness. But the prominent theme feature that can be read between the lines is the power the sick person should display, and as it comes evident from the text of the book, the power stands as the emphatic point of the sickness, the key social and mental factor in health and medical care response to sickness.
The book is divided into six logical parts, each concerning a certain aspect of global medicalization, and 26 chapters, each revealing the concrete topic of the research and specific points of medicine as the science.
The disease is looked at through the prism of global medical aspects, such as the professional dominance of physicians. It is looked at the modern aspects of medicalization. The author uses the researchers experience of the earlier years to show that the instant processes of globalization and modern aspects of life affect medical care.
Light, re-examining Parson’s 1930 essay, show the strict dependency of the profession upon the social aspects of its application. “Ironically, for Parson, it follows that if the medicine is restructured as for-profit corporations, then physicians will act like corporate officers. We need to think of professions as countervailing powers in a field force of other major forces, and then examine their changing relationships over time and across countries” (Light, chapter 14).
The work contains many episodes and specimens on how the disease should be treated, whether it’s a common illness, some problem of the century or a chronic disease. The lifestyle, illness treatment, the way social aspects make contributions to the life of the sick are the points to discuss the power of the sick. The power one should display to defeat the illness is the main burden of the research.
So, society and social aspects are the points in the treatment of the illness. The genesis of medicine worldwide gave sick persons different means to cope with the illness.
First and general is the social way governed by the public policy of the state. Professional medical care is done by the state, first of all, and is given to anybody. That is when the qualified physician prescribes the specific treatment.
The next point is socio-psychological assistance. Many countries of the world work out different nursing programs. It is the state public policy along with the qualified medical care given by the doctors to attain, maintain and recover functioning and one’s health. And in the way nursing treats sick persons, it is definitely a profession.
And last but not least. The power is some more aspect in the process of recovery to be mentioned. The strength that an ill person should possess is the power that will guide him to total recovery. And from this point of view, nursing is closer to the sick person, as historically the nuns were to look after sick persons, and the belief they inspired them with was the source of the strength and power for the sick persons.
References
Wolfe, Samuel. “Professional Dominance and the Medical Profession”. American Journal of Public Health. 76 (1986): 11-12.
Light, Donald. “The Medical Profession and Organization Change: From Professional Dominance to Countervailing Power”. The medical Profession and Organizational Change: from professional dominance to countervailing power. 2000.
Nursing. 2008. Web.