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APPENDIX A - Definitions of Professionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Richard L. Cruess
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Sylvia R. Cruess
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Yvonne Steinert
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
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Summary

DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, Oxford, UK, Clarendon Press, 1989.

The occupation which one professes to be skilled in and to follow. a. a vocation in which a professed knowledge of some department of learning or science is used in its application to the affairs of others or in the practice of an art founded upon it. b. in a wider sense, any calling or occupation by which a person habitually earns his living.

Webster's 3rd International Dictionary of the English Language, Springfield, Massachusetts, Merriam Webster, 1981.

A calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive preparation including instruction in skills and methods as well as in the scientific, historical, or scholarly principles underlying such skills and methods; maintaining by force of organization or concerted opinion high standards of achievement and conduct, and committing its members to continued study and to a kind of work which has for its prime purpose the rendering of a public service.

SOCIAL SCIENCES LITERATURE

Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York, Basic Books, 1984, p. 15.

Professional authority can be defined, in part, by a distinctive type of dependency condition – the dependence on the professional's superior competence. Dependence also arises at times from the emotional needs of clients and the administrative functions of the professions, created especially by the welfare state.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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