The purpose of health care practice is the care for the ailing and the sick at any time, to promote health interests and well-being, and strive towards healing environments [1]. On the other end of the spectrum, standards of what a patient should expect from their practitioner include amongst others professionalism [1]. In this context, professionalism is an ideal that should be sustained [1, 2]. The practice of medicine has to be interpreted as the application of scientific knowledge to human health bridging the gap between science and society [1]. However, practice is more than knowledge about disease. It is defined by experiences, feelings, and interpretations of humans in extraordinary moments of fear, anxiety and doubt [1]. With respect to this background, ‘professionalism’ is supporting the trust the public is lying in healthcare practitioners [1]. Consequently physicians have an ethical responsibility towards their patients. However, the medical profession is undergoing a profound transformation delivering more patient-centered care to individuals and populations, improving quality, and reducing costs and unnecessary diagnostics and treatments [3]. Within the profession, the obligation and opportunities to improve medical professionalism extend from leadership to individual physicians [3]. In this respect, practicing physicians are challenged by a growing demand from multiple participating parties in health care systems [3].

Political, social and economic factors with advances in technology and science have reshaped attitudes and expectations of the public as well as health care practitioners [1]. Historically, physicians’ central obligation was not to harm, and most physicians were assumed by the public and themselves to be delivering quality care [3]. Variation in treatment was acknowledged but interpreted as normal part of the art of medicine necessary for adequate individual therapy [3]. Early attempts to standardize treatment procedures or systematical outcome measurements were met with resistance [3]. Consequently, infrastructures and skills to measure outcomes routinely did not exist [3]. During the last three decades, considerable changes have occurred with documentations of outcome regarding different therapeutic options. Evidence-based medicine has demonstrated that the above-mentioned variation of individual therapies is related to failure [3]. We currently are in the midst of a revolution focusing on patient-centered, outcome-based, and efficient health care [3]. This development seems to represent a profound change in the way medicine will be practiced and how health care will be delivered in the future [3]. In this respect, the nature of the practitioner-patient relationship has become transactional, with patients being viewed as customers and health care being comodified [1]. Moreover, we have progressed to an era where professional autonomy is losing to accountability [1]. Physicians will be required to demonstrate accountability and professionalism to their peers, to the society, and to their individual patients in different ways [3]. Accountability does not only include quality of treatment based on outcomes but also resource utilization, cost effectiveness, appropriateness of recommended care, the responsibility to help improve systems of care, and most important to ensure that care is individually patient-centered [3].

There are several descriptions of professionalism as it pertains to health practice [1].

The Association of American Medical Colleges describes professionalism as a field of work in which the workers must be implicitly trustworthy and must pursue their work as ‘virtuous undertaking, a moral activity’ [1]. Health practice should be considered a ‘guild’ [1]. The Association considers professionalism in health care to be a social good [1].

The Royal College Working Party’s definition signifies a set of values, behaviors and relationships describing the trust the public has in health practitioners [1, 4]. Knowledge, clinical skills and judgment are used guaranteeing humans’ health by a partnership between patient and practitioner [4]. This partnership should be based on mutual respect, individual responsibility, and appropriate accountability that impacts on collective human dignity [1]. This ‘professionalism’ should be available in general and everyone can benefit from it [1].