Professionalism is one of those terms that gets thrown around quite a bit, maybe too often, particularly in the academic arena. Maybe so often that it has begun to lose some of its meaning and impact. The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) defines professionalism as:
...the active demonstration of the traits of a professional. These traits include: knowledge and skills of the profession, commitment to self-improvement of skills and knowledge, service orientation, pride in the profession, covenantal relationship with client, creativity and innovation, conscience and trustworthiness, accountability for his or her work, ethically sound decision making and leadership.
This definition is further expanded upon in a white paper defining pharmacy student professionalism.
While few of us would have come up with all of the characteristics listed above if we were asked to define professionalism, probably all of us can recognize professionalism when we see it and can clearly identify people or situations in which professionalism is not being exercised.
For the students: how has the meaning of a professional and professionalism changed since being accepted to and beginning pharmacy school? Can you recall a situation that you have witnessed or been involved in that either demonstrates professionalism or a lack of it?
For the mentors: be thinking about how your view or definition of professionalism has changed since graduating from pharmacy school and as you've moved through your career. The students will be asking you about this early next week.
20 comments:
I have always known that professionalism is important especially in the working world, but since being accepted to and attending pharmacy school, I have a new found respect for those that practice professionalism in everyday life. While I have not worked in a pharmacy environment for a great deal of time, I have been exposed to events where people were very professional and not so professional.
One instance that sticks out in my mind the most is an example of someone who was not so professional, an insurance worker at a doctor's office. Let me give you the background information. We had sent a prior authorization form to this doctor twice and had still received nothing back from them or the insurance company for the patient. So, as is the custom at my pharmacy, we called the doctor's office after we sent it the third time. We were connected with an insurance worker in the office who informed us that we were "stupid idiots, that didn't know what we were doing." She insisted that she had sent the form several times and that there should not be an issue. Long story short, the paperwork had actually gotten misplaced at the insurance company. Needless to say, we never got an apology from this lady. This stands out in my mind because this lady had no respect for us. This showed a great lack of professionalism.
Do you think professionalism is something that can be taught or learned?
How has being a professional impacted your personal life? How do you exhibit professionalism within the community (outside of your job)?
What do you think is the most important aspect of professionalism in your everyday setting?
How do you distinguish between character and professionalism and along those lines is professionalism prefered over qualify of work?
I think professionalism applies to all people regardless of the type of job you are doing. How you interact with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers impacts their perception of you. Once again this all comes down to building relationships and the best way to begin any relationship is to present yourself in a professional manner. For instance, appropriate attire, being respectful, are treating everyone equally whether they are janitor's or CEO's is a good place to start. Poor or lack of profesionalism has such a negative affect on your career and your interactions with people in general. I work in ambulatory care, so being professional with patients and physicians helps build the trusting relationship necessary for us to all work together. In a word, professionalism is "essential" to success.
Have you been in a situation where your initial reaction would have been not very professional, but you instead handled it in a professional manner? How did you handle this? What was the outcome?
Do you think that continuing education on professionalism for pharmacists is a good idea? Why or why not?
If I had to summarize professionalism in one word, it would be character. Both words individually create pictures in our minds of what they mean and each one of us has our own standards. We can't really pinpoint just one single definition to each word, but we know it when we see it. It is something that needs to be embedded in ourselves if it isn't already. It is something that we need to instill in our lives as a young buck to pharmacy just as we learned times tables in 2nd grade. These are both lesson's that we will carry with us through our careers and our daily lives.
I did not have a chance to say this in the class discussion, but I believe that professionalism is something that can be taught, learned and used to one's benefit. Just like we learned good manners growing up, we could use a class and few role models to learn how to be professionals and eventually adopt the behavior as a second nature. I have been working in retail pharmacy for a while and I can confirm that the lack of professionalism is wide-spread; an example would be: The phone rings, the technician picks up the phone, the patient asks a question about a drug interaction, which the technician relays to the pharmacist. The next step would be the pharmacist picking up the phone to respond directly to the request, instead, he charges the technician of providing the answer to the patient: Just tell the caller, there is nothing on their profile that indicates any interaction. Moral of the story: The response the pharmacist provided is unreliable lacks appropriate steps to counseling because he needed to talk to the patient to find out if there is any reason to suspect and interaction or other factors are involved, for example, a food interaction with the medication. This example shows, indeed, a lack of a few professional traits such as responsibility, accountability and service. When professionalism becomes natural, the job becomes rewarding and fulfilling and as a consequence generates all the good things such as creativity, innovation and service.
The most important aspect of professionalism in my setting is mutual respect. In a academic setting, most of the people you work with are leaders in their respected areas. This doesn't mean that they are always right, so it becomes very important to present comments or suggestions in a respectful manner, understanding the background of the person you are making your interaction with. It doesnt matter if it is a nurse, doctor or janitor it is important to understand that what they do is important and essential. Fostering relationships through mutual respect pays big dividends. Ohh and where a suit every once in a while, that helps too. :)
Nathan Culver
Our evaluations of "professionalism" in class were interesting to say the least. Some people were tired of beating a dead horse and others welcomed the topic. I feel that professionalism is not something we can just "learn" in a few days or months and just keep like some kind of math equation; but rather its like being a pharmacist in itself. What I mean by this is we are committed to lifelong learning. LIFELONG. Meaning we just don't learn everything in 4 years and are done with it - we must constantly make ourselves better, as a health care provider AND as a professional.
I find some of the questions you have posed to be rather thought provoking. Throughout my pharmacy school curriculum professionalism was always emphasized so the question that was asked about whether professionalism can be taught is relevant. As with most things I think professionalism requires practice so I think it's great when it's a point of discussion so early on. It's not taught necessarily, but the more one keeps it in the forefront of their the more it will become second nature. It will be less of something you have to try to do and more of something that you do naturally. When I started pharmacy school I wasn't too familiar with the concept of professionalism and thought as long as you were nice to people and didn't wear jeans with holes you were considered professional. As my pharmacy career has progressed and I have had to focus more on professional behavior I've come to realize that there's so much more to it, but I don't have to try so much to do it well. A good rule of thumb is to always consider not only your intentions behind what you say and do, but also how it could be interpreted. By looking at a situation from all angles you can avoid a situation that might be considered "unprofessional" by some.
I believe that professionalism can be learned, but much of what it means to be professional is taught to us at an early age. I agree with the other post that good manners are a foundation on which you can learn what it means to be a professional in life and in one's practice. I think that a lot of what it means to be a professional is taught to us early in our lives by learning to respect others through the example of parents, mentors, or important people in our lives.
I believe that professionalism is comprised partially of the character that you build from an early age and partially from what you aquire throughout your career. I found that after pharmacy school was when I really started to see how professionalism not only builds trust in people but improves working relationships and opportunities in the future. I have mostly practiced in the long -term care setting but I could clearly see that the consultant pharmcists who acted professional to every person from the medical director to the certified nursing assistant had the best relationships with their nursing homes and were often a welcomed part of trying to help manage these patients. I found this true myself and also saw that my professionalism was often what lead people to bring me opportunity in the future. Many of the lectures, advisory meetings and other things I been asked to participate in was purely because of someone seeing me in "action" and wanting to give me a chance to grow.
I think everyone has had a situation in which they have been "tried". I had times where I have had to step back, recollect my thoughts, or even just keep silent. But what I can tell you is that people notice.
In the end, we all want to be respected and professionalism is key to earning that respect.
Pharmacists have been the most trusted professional, based on customer surveys, for many years. I believe this is becasue of several factors such as accessability, honesty, trustworthness, and professionism. To maintain this high level of customer satisfaction, we must continue all of these positive characteristics.
Professionalism can be learned and, just like our knowledge of clinical information and drug information, must be continually improved. CE programs addressing this aspect of our profession are needed and should be utilized by members of our profession.
I have worked with many pharmacists who practiced great professionalism and some who did not. Those who did were able to adapt their practice as the situation presented itself. They were able to communicate useful information to a patient with little education or understanding of their medical situation and discuss indepth medication therapy with medical specialists. They were able to calm a disgruntled customer and address their concern to mutual satisfaction, while still maintaining their professionalism when interacting with an overbearing physician. These are not easy tasks! They require a lot of practice and sometime failures. But from each failure, a good professional, learns how to do it better by reviewing what happened and pondering how to make it better the next time. Sometimes that involves advise from your colegues.
With reference to the question about Professionalism vs quality, quality is part of what gives us the high customer rating as well. Professionalism is one component of the Quality of our work, whether it is dispensing the correct drug, giving the correct information to a patient, or making the correct recommendation to the healthcare team about a patient's medication therapy. Neither can be sacrificed for the other.
As professionals, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our community that extends beyond our work environment. Many pharmacist I know are active in other activities in their community. I am a member of my local town's Planning Board. I have no special education in urban planning, but I am interested in what happens in my community and how that effects my and my family's lives. I thinks this is what every citizen of my community is concerned with. I use my professionalism to conduct myself in these meetings, devote time to reading supporting documents provided for our meetings and making, what I feel, are good judgements on voting for or against zoning and development changes in my community. Many other professionals use their 'expertise' in their fields to give back to their own communities as well. Thus expressing our professionalism beyond our work.
Hope this posting helps. Thanks for the opportunity to share.
I want to agree with Mo and say that as I have worked as a technician I have directly seen what he is referring to, but what is even worse is when the pharmacist (to avoid getting in a detailed discussion with a patient) rattles off several interactions for the technician to tell the patient about. Yes this has happened to me so many times I had to finally say I am not comfortable telling them that. I completely agree that we see unprofessional behavior so often we maybe do not even notice it, becuase before I read Mo's post I would not have even thought of that particular situation as unprofessional, but it absolutely is, and it is a total disregard of patient centered care, which is worse than not acting like the professional you should be as a pharmacist. I know most of us feel like the whole professionalism thing is getting old, but I think we may be overlooking a lot of unprofessional behavior daily. I just realized I had been doing it. Maybe we should be trying to set the bar a bit higher.
When I think of professionalism, I think of presenting ones self in a manor that allows that person’s coworkers, other healthcare professionals, and patients to respect their input on disease state management. Remember that you as a healthcare professional are representing not only yourself, but the company or institution that you work for and your actions either inside the office or outside the office are seen by others. As it is always stated, every action has a reaction and by remaining professional you will gain and/or retain respect from others.
In my opinion, professionalism starts with a person's attire and presentation of themselves. The second avenue approached would probably be attitude and clarity of speaking. Finally, body language plays a part in being professional and so does good listening skills without interrupting the other person. This is my opinion from many encounters with professionals and how I have concluded whether or not they are truly a professional.
Professionalism is not a quality or trait which can come and go, it is a mindset which MUST be portrayed inside and outside of a professional setting. If a patient recognizes you in a public setting professionalism cannot be checked at the door at work, you must remain proper and polite to retain your trust in the patient.
Also, I think a main reason why we learn so much about being professional is because the term itself is continuously evolving and changing as new situations are presented everyday. Professionalism is not a plateau which is reached it is a continuous learning process.
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