Professionalism

What does professionalism mean and what are its attributes? Find out why its place in contemporary healthcare has become so important.

Professionalism forms an increasing focus for CSP work in supporting and promoting members’ education, practice and conduct. This reflects its growing currency in how other professions (particularly in health care) express their values and commitment to serving the public interest. It is also growing in significance in contemporary structures and requirements relating to professional regulation.

As a concept, professionalism encapsulates the following expectations:

• a motivation to deliver a service to others
• adhering to a moral and ethical code of practice
• striving for excellence, maintaining an awareness of limitations and scope of practice
• empowering others (rather than protecting professional knowledge and skills).

Fulfilling these expectations is fundamental to establishing and preserving a profession’s credibility with the public and how it demonstrates its capacity to carry what can be seen as the privileges of professional practice - autonomy and professional self-regulation - and its fulfilment of the parallel responsibilities of accountability, transparency and openness [see Figure 1].

Figure 1: elements of professionalism

Wrapped up in professionalism is the recognition that professional practice:

• has strong ethical dimensions
• is complex and diverse, constantly changing, and uncertain and unpredictable
• cannot be defined simply in terms of possessing and implementing a fixed body of knowledge and skill
• cannot be done in isolation
• depends on individuals engaging in learning throughout their professional life and adapting and developing their professional activity accordingly
• requires individuals to be able to cope with the non-routine, unknown and incomplete, and potentially conflicting, information.

The CSP is focused on supporting and promoting its members’ professionalism. It does this in ways that:

• nurture the development of the attributes required for professional practice and that recognise the complexity of contemporary activity, responsibilities and opportunities for the physiotherapy workforce
• promote the central importance of members’ adherence to the CSP’s Rules of Professional Conduct and Standards of Physiotherapy Practice, and Assistant Code of Conduct (recognising that these documents are all now being reviewed within the Charting the Future project and will be replaced by a new resource in due course, but remain as current until this point)
• support members in responding to changing professional regulatory requirements and understanding the value of these for demonstrating the profession’s commitment to delivering high-quality, research-informed patient care and for preserving and enhancing public confidence in what the profession does
• promote individual responsibility for ensuring safe and effective practice while acknowledging the factors that can impact on their competence at particular times or in particular roles or settings
• address the ethical and emotional dimensions of practice
• help individuals to ensure that their professional activity is informed by the profession’s growing evidence base and by technological advances, demographic change, and changes in health and social care policy and organisation
• emphasise the importance of individuals thinking critically about what they do
• promote the dynamic relationship between learning and practice
• promote the principles of trust and self-evaluation, while ensuring putting safety and effectiveness are at the core of practice and recognising the balance that must be struck between professional privilege and responsibility
• recognise the dynamic relationship between individuals’ scope of practice and that of the profession and the evolving nature of each
• recognise that individuals’ practice does not exist in a vacuum, but relies on their effective interaction with others and their ability to act, influence and respond appropriately within the different, and changing, contexts in which they practise
• recognise that professional activity is more than about deploying clinical, regardless of the occupational role of the individual.

References

• Aston-McCrimmon E. (1984) ‘Trends in clinical practice: An analysis of competence’ Physiotherapy Canada. 36:4;184-188
• Boam R. & Sparrow P. (eds.) Designing and Achieving Competence. A Competency-based Approach to Developing People and Organisations. McGaw-Hill, London.
• Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (2002) Rules of Professional Conduct. CSP, London.
• Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (2005) Standards of Physiotherapy Practice. CSP, London.
• Eraut M. (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence. The Falmer Press, London.
• Fish D., Twinn S, Purr B. (1991) Promoting reflection: Improving the supervision of practice in health visiting and initial teacher training. How to enable students to learn through professional practice. Report No.2. West London Institute of Higher Education, Twickenham.
• Hodkinson P (1995) ‘Competence, professionalism and vocational education and training’ in Hodkinson P. & Issit M. (eds.) The Challenge of Professionalism through Vocational Education and Training, Cassell, London. 146-156
• Hollis V & Clark C.F. (1993) ‘Core skills and competencies: Part 2, the competency conundrum’ British Journal of Occupational Therapy. 56:3;102-105
• Medical Professionalism Project (2002) ‘Medical professionalism in the new millennium: A physician’s charter’ The Lancet. 359:520-522
• Schon D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, London.
• Schon D. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.