Accepted Type
Oral
Code
OD2-1-3
Acceptance Declaration
Accept
Additional Information
Yes, I have/had in the past 2 years, a financial interest, arrangement, or affiliation with one or more organizations that could be perceived as a direct/indirect conflict of interest in the context/content of the subject of this or any other presentation.
Was this work accepted for CCME 2020?
no
Category
General Call (Workshop, Oral Presentation, Poster Presentation)
Type
Oral
Sub Type
Education Research
Will the presenter be a:
Graduate Student
Affiliation
Considered for Poster
no
Title
Whose "Societal Needs": Exploring the Implicit Social Contract Between Medicine and Society
Length of Presentation
Background/Purpose
The CanMEDS framework speaks frequently to the relationships between physicians and society. For example, within the text of the Professional Role, the former is positioned in service to the latter, and governed by an "implicit contract between society and the medical profession". Yet ambiguity around what this implicit social contract entails raises questions about which party decides what that service should look like and how medical faculties educate learners to provide it.
Methods
This work presents a critical discourse analysis of texts related to the CanMEDS framework, focusing on discourse around "society" and "societal needs." Its purpose is to shed light on how these documents frame the social contract "between society and the medical profession."
Results
Findings suggest that medical education leaders have interpreted the social contract in ways that speak for and about societal needs. While the Royal College's policies and frameworks do address the common good, its authoring of "society" is a key discursive technique by which self-regulation, autonomy, and privilege can be implicitly and strategically maintained.
Conclusion
These discursive practices may unintentionally constrict professional medicine's understandings of the myriad health care needs of the diverse Canadian society and its constitutive publics. Further, they may potentially undermine trust and accountability to that society and shape educational practices in ways that reproduce this asymmetric power relationship. If we are to educate physicians to work for the equitable realization of the social right to health care, we need consider alternative models that are democratically produced and created in a more egalitarian partnership with the society that medicine is to serve.
Keyword 1
Professionalism
Keyword 2
Social Contract
Level of Training
General
Abstract Themes
Professionalism
Additional Theme (First choice)
Additional Theme (Second Choice)
Additional Theme (Third Choice)
Authors
Presenter
Brett Schrewe
Term 1
Yes
Term 2
Yes
Term 3
Yes
Term 4
Yes
Term 5
Yes
