Understanding the crisis of the medical profession: a sociological perspective

In the last decades, medicine has experienced intense technological, political and cultural changes that have reconfigured the role of the physician. To characterize the actual status of the medical profession, this article discusses the crisis in the medical profession through the identification and analysis of 6 macrosocial phenomena that can be traced through the sociological perspective including commercialism, managerialism and medicalization. Aside of these tendencies, it seems that it is in the daily encounter of the physician and the new role of the patient where these changes are reproduced and strengthened. The analysis nourishes from a sociological perspective by eliciting the classical attributes of the profession: monopoly of knowledge, auto-regulation, mandate and license. In the light of this concept, it becomes clear that the first three attributes suffer an involution, which offers insight to reexamine the grounds in which the concept was constructed, and to reflect on the implications for medical education.