The RCP believes in the importance of fostering medical professionalism and leadership, with doctors as active participants in shaping the landscape of healthcare, working within a motivated and committed workforce, and demonstrating professionalism and leadership within healthcare teams.
Nurturing doctors' sense of professionalism and desire to always put the patient first is key to protecting and augmenting the quality of patient care. However, there is a widespread view that modern medical training and the current demands of healthcare delivery - which reflect enormous changes within the health service - are no longer conducive to developing the personal skills, competencies and qualities that represent medical professionalism.
- Promoting medical leadership - There is a clear need for an effective institutional framework that will allow doctors to be active participants in shaping the landscape of healthcare, and not simply passive responders to prevailing circumstances. Management dogma, the rigid application of target-setting and strategic planning can fail to account for the complexity of modern healthcare. Doctors, as stewards of quality, must be able and empowered to take on a greater role in health-service management and leadership.
- Professionalism and leadership within healthcare teams - In order to work effectively within a healthcare team, it is vital that doctors are clear about their specific areas of responsibility and understand the value of what they are adding to the team - a contribution that will vary according to time and place. The idea of working with other healthcare professionals therefore needs to be introduced early in every doctor's career, so that an appreciation of the value and roles of other professionals can be developed and reinforced.
- Transmitting professional values - Although education and training should play critical roles in strengthening the ethos of professionalism, many of the underlying values of professionalism, central to the trust between patient and doctor, are not taught or reflected on systematically in undergraduate or postgraduate training.
- Sustaining a commitment to professionalism throughout long medical careers - High-quality patient care depends upon a highly motivated and committed medical workforce, yet evidence from several sources points to a serious issue of low morale within front-line clinical physicians, due in no small part to a failure in the management of their medical careers.
To counter further disillusionment, measures that support a genuinely positive, patient-centred and life-enhancing professional culture are needed - including a more flexible career pathway and the opportunity for senior physicians to acquire management skills and responsibilities.
