The Charter on Professionalism for Health Care Organizations.

In 2002, the Physician Charter on Medical Professionalism was published to provide physicians with guidance for decision making in a rapidly changing environment. Feedback from physicians indicated that they were unable to fully live up to the principles in the 2002 charter partly because of their employing or affiliated health care organizations. A multistakeholder group has developed a Charter on Professionalism for Health Care Organizations, which may provide more guidance than charters for individual disciplines, given the current structure of health care delivery systems.

Perspective: Organizational professionalism: relevant competencies and behaviors.

The professionalism behaviors of physicians have been extensively discussed and defined; however, the professionalism behaviors of health care organizations have not been systemically categorized or described. Defining organizational professionalism is important because the behaviors of a health care organization may substantially impact the behaviors of physicians and others within the organization as well as other institutions and the larger community. In this article, the authors discuss the following competencies of organizational professionalism, derived from ethical values: service, respect, fairness, integrity, accountability, mindfulness, and self-motivation.

A behavioral and systems view of professionalism.

Professionalism may not be sufficient to drive the profound and far-reaching changes needed in the US health care system, but without it, the health care enterprise is lost. Formal statements defining professionalism have been abstract and principle based, without a clear description of what professional behaviors look like in practice. This article proposes a behavioral and systems view of professionalism that provides a practical approach for physicians and the organizations in which they work.

Addressing physicians' impaired communication skills.

Introduction: Deficient physician communication skills can lead to complaints by patients and colleagues. While there are many communication training courses for physicians, there are few descriptions of programs that address their deficiencies.

Aim: This report describes the use of a coaching model developed by the author to remediate inadequate communication skills.

Satisfying the patient, but failing the test.

Communication experts convened in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2002 to assess current tools that evaluate physician communication skills. They noted occasional discrepancies between a patient's impression of a physician's skill and the physician's performance as measured by current checklists. The authors explore the reasons for this discrepancy and propose a research agenda to resolve it.

Patient-physician communication as organizational innovation in the managed care setting.

Despite changes in the healthcare system, the relationship between patients and physicians remains fundamental to high-quality care. Managed care rules and restrictions, such as constraints on choice of providers, review processes, and decreasing length of visits, are creating potential conflicts between patients and their physicians. To strengthen the patient-physician relationship, some managed care organizations are implementing communication skills training for physicians.