Medical Professionalism in the U.S.: Under Vigorous Challenge by International medical graduate committee of gap

The values of American culture have changed and this has led since 1970 to a competition with traditional medical values. The social forces that have stirred a reconsideration of core medical values come from 1. economic, 2. institutional and 3. life style sources and is related to efforts by non-service providers to gain profits from medical services and the attempts by both governmental and non-governmental sources to control the cost of medical care. The actions of physicians will be assessed based on how well their behavior conforms to the ethical precepts of the profession. Being instructed in what the ethical precepts are and in how they were derived should contribute to establishing the expectations for what is expected of the physician. In order to delineate medical professionalism for the practitioner and the student we will explore: 1) the sources from which medical professionalism were derived, 2) the attempts to define medical professionalism, 3) conceptual approaches to medical professionalism, 4) the process of change in the scope of medical professionalism in the 20 th century, and 5) attempts to teach medical professionalism. The intrusion of cost into medical care has been the key challenge to professionalism.