Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BMA Health Policy and Economic Research Unit, British Medical Association, BMA House, Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9JP www.bma.org.uk British Medical Association, 2008
Contents
Setting the scene Introduction Chapter 1 An ancient profession in an ever-changing world Chapter 2 Ancient values distilled over time Chapter 3 The role of the doctor Chapter 4 Safeguarding and promoting the role of doctors Conclusion Looking to the future References
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The times have changed, conditions of practice altered and are altering rapidly, but the ideals which inspired our earlier physicians are ours today ideals which are ever old, yet always fresh and new. William Osler, 1903
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Health care in the 21st century will require a new kind of health professional: someone who is equipped to transcend the traditional doctor-patient relationship to reach a new level of partnership with patients; someone who can lead, manage and work effectively in a team and organisational environment; someone who can practise safe high quality care but also constantly see and create the opportunities for improvement. Liam Donaldson, 1991
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The doctors role as diagnostician and the handler of clinical uncertainty and ambiguity requires a profound educational base in science and evidence-based practice as well as research awareness. The doctors frequent role as head of the healthcare team and commander of considerable clinical resource requires that greater attention is paid to management and leadership skills regardless of specialism. An acknowledgement of the leadership role of medicine is increasingly evident. John Tooke, 2008
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
Introduction
The Modernising Medical Careers inquirys recommendation to develop a common shared understanding of the role of doctors formed part of what was a welcome response to the considerable shortcomings of the MMC project evidenced during the course of 2007. However, this simple call for greater clarity around the contribution of doctors in the context of the modern healthcare team disguises a very much more complex set of pressures currently in operation across the health care sector. These pressures, and likewise a number of key trends, necessarily impact upon the medical professions engagement with, and contribution to, medicine in the UK both currently and in the future. Together these provide a convincing imperative to explore the role of the doctor as a concept. This report draws upon previous work by the BMA in this area, and more recent thinking carried 5 out across the Association on the role of particular cadres of doctors. In the first section of this report, the nature of these pressures will be addressed and, in concluding, how these require us to reflect on the two forces, change and constancy, which together shape the role of the doctor. The following sections will explore the enduring values that provide an ever-steady platform upon which the medical profession can reliably respond to the challenges it faces. The importance of these values is reflected in the findings of recent research carried out by the BMA that allows us to shift the debate from one of abstract understanding and instead demonstrate the values relevance to current doctors and the public. Further exploration of these values will seek to illustrate how their combination underlies both an individual doctors practice as well as the distinctive contribution that doctors make to health care more generally. Consequently, in looking at the unique aspects of a doctors role, the discussion will be framed by an examination of not simply what is it that doctors do? but, rather, what is it that doctors do that others dont? By gaining an appreciation of these particular exceptional skills and competencies, and the values that underpin them, the fundamental nature of the doctors role will be clearly illuminated. In the final section, the current challenges facing the medical profession will be revisited and consideration given to the consequences of allowing change to unwittingly, or otherwise, erode the values that are at the core of what a doctor is and does. In confronting this possibility, the paper will offer its own challenge to those charged with the responsibility for safeguarding and harnessing these values to the benefit of patients, the NHS and the profession itself in the context of a complex and changing health care environment.
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
chronic disease resulting from changing diet, lifestyle choices and the very fact that people are living longer. Obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depression are endemic, whist arthritis, Parkinsons disease and dementia are becoming ever more common in our aging population. This requires the focus of health care to change from one dominated by acute care, to one centred on preventive and therapeutic care with the management of chronic and long-term conditions at the fore. Closely allied to this growing emphasis on wellness not simply illness is the need to reinvigorate the public health agenda in order to address the changing nature of illness and the inequalities which in many instances underlie these trends.
A changing profession
Whilst recent social trends, policy initiatives and organisational change have all played a part in shaping doctors roles, these may be regarded as external forces; equally significant in determining the nature of doctors roles have been a range of drivers internal to the medical profession. Some of these are closely allied to the changing social norms already discussed. The increasing mobility of women within the wider labour market has been reflected in the medical profession and continues to be evidenced such that 60% of medical students today are female. If current trends continue by 2015 there will be more women than men practising medicine. Alongside this, expectations within the medical profession are evolving with doctors seeking a more conventional work-life balance than traditionally has been the case. Some would argue that medicine has become less of a vocation and more of a job, though even if this is true, there would be further arguments about what was cause and what effect. As doctors themselves experience the pressures arising from such change they have begun to discuss what this means for their professional status. In respect of the death of deference and the development of new and extended roles for other health professionals many doctors suggest there is a growing sense of deprofessionalisation. Yet, in the face of these challenges, doctors have continued to be responsible for, and responsive to, major advances in medicine. The rapid pace of scientific discovery and technological innovation over the last few decades has been unprecedented. Medical practice remains dynamic and constantly evolving and is an expression of the key synergy between the application of new technologies and the values that provide the foundations for the role of the doctor. The vast scope for adaptation and improving clinical delivery is what has led to the increasing emphasis on clinical leadership with a view to ensuring that innovation is translated into better care and better health. Given these forces for change and their ongoing impact on the role of the doctor, we might consider that there is a real risk of eroding the medical professions identity but what is it that lies at the heart of a doctors practice?
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The outcome of this work has subsequently been used to frame further attempts by the BMA to refine the concept of professionalism and what it means to be a modern doctor. Arguably, much of the recent debate around medical professionalism has been based on the views of key stakeholders, organisations and influential individuals. An obvious omission from this endeavour is empirical evidence of grassroots doctors views on professional values and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the view of the public. In an attempt to correct this and progress understanding around the role of the doctor the BMA has 9 used its cohort studies of 1995 and 2006 medical graduates to examine the views and perceptions of junior doctors regarding professional values. This has provided an opportunity to explore the legitimacy of the above value-set in defining the foundation upon which medicine is practised. In addition, the BMA has more recently surveyed the public to capture its views on the importance of these core values and how these qualities relate to the role of the doctor today. With regard to doctors, in both studies (1995 and 2006 UK graduates) participants were asked to rank the core values described above in order of importance. The findings clearly demonstrated that competence (to practise medicine) was regarded as the most important for both cohorts of doctors. Perhaps understandably given the growing emphasis on competency based training the perceived importance of this core value has increased: 49 per cent of the 2006 cohort rated competence as the most important core value at graduation from medical school, compared with 39 per cent of the 1995 cohort at graduation. Indeed, the centrality of technical competence in medical professionalism has international credence with a recent review of professional codes and standards of doctors across the 10 UK, USA and Canada emphasising this point. Perhaps more interestingly, the values rated most highly after competence showed greater variance between cohorts and over time. Caring, compassion and commitment were the core values rated as next most important by the 2006 cohort of doctors. This is in contrast with the results of the 1995 cohort study, whereby doctors were more likely to rate caring, responsibility and integrity as most important. Furthermore, nine years after graduation, 1995 cohort doctors ranked integrity as the second most important core value, followed by caring and compassion. This variance suggests that doctors relationship to the value-set can and will evolve over time yet their recognition of the values in combination as central to their practice and roles remains constant. The findings from our work with the public suggest that these qualities have a wider resonance also with the majority of the respondents rating them as very important to the role of a doctor. The top four rated qualities were competence (97%), followed by integrity and spirit of enquiry (each with 77%) and confidentiality with (76%). In addition, the public, as with the doctors in our cohort study, were asked to prioritise the qualities and the results revealed striking similarities. Competence was again considered to be the top priority required in a doctor with 71% of the respondents rating this as number one. Moreover, this figure rose to 87% when scores for the second and third quality priorities were included. Excluding competence, the next three highest qualities prioritised by respondents were integrity, spirit of enquiry and caring and commitment (which were rated as equally important). This brief examination of an evident consensus amongst the profession, and between doctors and the public, in respect of the ancient virtues perceived as central to a doctors role is helpful in shaping an approach to medical professionalism and in developing an understanding of the values that underpin medical practice. Nevertheless, these values do not in themselves define the role of a doctor. Rather, they provide a foundation upon which doctors can develop the skills and expertise necessary to enable them to deliver the wide and varied elements that comprise their roles and to make their unique contribution. It is therefore to the question, What is it that doctors do? that we now turn.
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
Moreover, the capacity of doctors to make a diagnosis is called upon in a diverse range of settings a patients home, a GPs practice, an outpatient clinic, an emergency department, a laboratory, a psychiatrists office with each context requiring doctors to employ their expertise accordingly. This act inevitably informs the course of a patients treatment, frames the prognosis and determines how their health is managed. It is the patients faith in a doctors ability to make a diagnosis, and through careful, compassionate communication to explain its implications and set out a plan of action in response, that rests at the core of the doctor-patient relationship.
Of particular importance is the role of those doctors undertaking academic medicine who work to combine service delivery with research, teaching and/or administration. Clinical academics are uniquely placed to use their expertise to make interconnections between clinical research and clinical practice, and pose new research questions, arising from clinical observations and experience. Improvements in the quality of healthcare that stem these roles bring about not only innovation in the delivery of care but also long term efficiencies for healthcare systems.
Training the next, and current, generation of doctors Dealing with uncertainty and managing complexity
Closely allied to this capacity to make a diagnosis and determine an effective intervention is doctors ability to operate in circumstances characterised more often than not by uncertainty. In their everyday roles doctors must manage complexity and risk. The assimilation of scientific knowledge, the manipulation of data, the understanding of co-morbidities, the recognition of changing circumstances, each require doctors to exercise good judgement in situations beyond the scope of protocols and guidelines. It is doctors willingness and ability to assume this responsibility, and the expectations made of them in this regard, that underline their real and unique value in contributing to, and leading, patient care. Doctors distinctive relationship with scientific knowledge and clinical experience, and to develop each other as fellow professionals, is further evidenced in respect of the commitment to medical 12 training and education which informs their careers. The GMCs, The Doctor as Teacher , states that all doctors have a professional obligation to contribute to the education and training of others, and that every doctor should be prepared to oversee the work of less experienced colleagues. We again see that whilst all doctors are expected to recognise this imperative, it is the case that certain of their number will focus in particular on acquiring the knowledge, skills and behaviors needed to ensure the effective teaching and training of medical students and doctors. These medical educators and clinical teachers develop, deliver and manage teaching programs and engage in scholarship and research into all aspects of teaching, learning, and assessment in 13 medicine. Medical students, junior doctors and those more senior doctors undertaking CPD all benefit from this shared understanding of the fundamental importance of education to their professional endeavor and their role as doctors. These unique relationships between experienced consultant and the less experienced colleague, between the specialty doctor and the junior doctor, or the GP trainer and the GP registrar, serve to extend the capabilities of the profession and further improve the standard of patient care.
Spirit of inquiry
From the outset as medical students to the final days of practice as experienced and expert practitioners, doctors recognise the value of continuing professional development. Doctors commitment to this endeavour ensures that developing their abilities is a constant, ongoing process and an essential part of their role and professional identity. Doctors have a responsibility for the integrity of their knowledge base, for its proper application, for its expansion and for its transmission to future practitioners and the public and consequently they place a high value on peer review and appraisal. A doctors practice is therefore intimately linked to the evidence base, guided by experience and compassion; or, where the evidence is not to hand, doctors are responsible for searching it out, evaluating it for scientific validity and assessing its practical application in the development of new treatments and the evolution of medicine. These three imperatives evaluating, discovering and extending are what require a doctor to be educated to a higher and broader level, and for a longer period, than most other healthcare workers. This characteristic reflects the spirit of inquiry which was identified by doctors and the public alike in our surveys as a key element of a doctors role. While not every doctor operates a scientific inquiry as a formalised research programme, all doctors must at all times work in accordance with this spirit of enquiry. As a result it can also be found as the driving force behind a number of other important facets of a doctors role.
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
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Such leadership is evident across the spectrum of practice: GPs lead improvements in the delivery of primary care, increasing access and shaping local services; public health doctors lead programmes focused on the health of communities; junior doctors and their senior colleagues lead developments in training both locally and at a national level through involvement in the Royal Colleges, deaneries, PMETB and other relevant bodies; and consultants, in their everyday posts, as well as in a range of more specific roles, including medical managers and medical directors, take the lead in developing policies and making management decisions within their own departments and hospitals, promoting innovation and excellence. In many of these cases it is by virtue of their longevity in post and their subsequent deep understanding of the needs of the local community, their hospital and their patients, that these doctors offer the necessary knowledge and continuity required to improve services and the care of patients.
complexities and supporting decision-making about health choices. Importantly, though we have explored the death of deference and the empowering effect of the information age above, it is apparent that most patients still rely on doctors to offer confident and competent reassurance and guidance based on mutual trust and understanding built up over time. However, this trusting relationship and the position of patients advocate must be balanced with a further role wherein doctors must exercise their judgement in order to manage resources effectively. This is particularly true for the vast majority of doctors in the UK who inevitably find themselves practising in the NHS where skills, time, facilities, and finance are all finite. As such the doctor is trusted to balance the needs and interests of one patient with those of current and future patients. Doctors face this complex dilemma daily and employ their knowledge and skills compassionately to address these questions of delivering the best possible care whilst ever mindful of resource allocation issues at a higher level. The necessary management of these pressures highlights the role that doctors have in serving both the patient and the public and further underlines the nature of the social contract doctors have with society. The individual doctor is trusted to serve the individual patient, but doctors also have a duty to whole families, and whole communities, treating illness and promoting health. It is commitment to this cause which defines their professional role.
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
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Furthermore, the growth in new practitioner roles inevitably means doctors in training are suffering reduced exposure to a range of procedures that would have traditionally offered a valuable source of learning. It is a concern that the impact of changing roles on doctors access to training opportunities and the gaining of necessary clinical experience has yet to be fully assessed. There is something of a dichotomy here wherein we are seeing the rise of increasingly protocolised basic medicine with which there is a risk that doctors will be deskilled in parallel with a corresponding increase in the complexity of advanced treatment which will require doctors to acquire ever more developed expertise. Finding an acceptable balance in this will be fundamental to the future role of doctors.
Skill mix
New ways of working, skill mix initiatives and an increasingly multidisciplinary approach point to the essential role teams are now expected to play in health care. The growing contribution made by other heath professionals in caring for patients brings welcome benefits for doctors as well as patients and, as a result, doctors traditional role as team-leader is evolving. It is a challenge for the medical profession to focus on its strengths, while ceding leadership to other professionals, when and where this is clinically appropriate. However, this blurring of boundaries also presents challenges. Without clear lines of responsibility and accountability these new relationships may work to the detriment of patient care. These concerns are particularly acute in areas of medical practice which lend themselves to management by non-medical healthcare professionals using protocols. Where such role substitution is employed, there is a risk that patients do not have access to the range of knowledge and skills that characterise a doctors holistic approach to care.
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
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References
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Osler W (1932) On the educational value of the medical society. In: Aequanimitas with other addresses to Medical Students, Nurses & Practitioners of Medicine. 3rd ed. Philadelphia. PA: Blakiston. Donaldson L (2001) Safe high quality health care: investing in tomorrows leaders. Quality in Health Care BMJ 10: ii8-ii12 Tooke J (2008) Aspiring to Excellence: Final Report of the Independent Inquiry into Modernising Medical Careers Ibid. The BMAs consultants committee has recently published its own report on the role of the consultant: BMA (2008) Role of the consultant http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/roleofconsultant0708 The junior doctors have considered the role of the junior doctors: BMA (2008) The role of the junior doctor http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/Roleofthejuniordoctor General Medical Council (2006) Good medical practice. London: GMC. Royal College of Physicians (2005) Doctors in society: medical professionalism in a changing world RCP: London. British Medical Association (1995) Core values for the medical profession in the 21st century. London: British Medical Association. BMA (2008) Professional values Findings from BMA cohort studies http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/cohortprofvalues Chisholm A and Askham J (2006) A review of professional code and standards for doctors in the UK, USA and Canada. Picker institute Europe. This research was carried out by an independent research agency, Hamilton Lock, commissioned by the BMA conducting 1011 quantitative in-street interviews in two geographic areas in England London/the Home Counties and Bristol and in Edinburgh. The interviews were completed between the 26 May and 13 June 2008. General Medical Council (GMC) (1999) The doctor as teacher. London: GMC. Academy of Medical Educators (2008) Frequently asked questions. Web address accessed on 20 June 2008. http://www.medicaleducators.org/faqs.asp General Medical Council (GMC) (2006) Good medical practice. London: GMC. Audit Commission (2007) A prescription for partnership: Engaging clinicians in financial management Commission for Health Improvement (2004) Lessons from CHI Investigations 2000 2003. Department of Health (2008) High Quality Care For All: NHS Next Stage Review Final Report HMSO.
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future
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The Role of the Doctor Building on the past, looking to the future