Getting Engaged: Exploring Professionalization in Canada

Abstract

Whether from a practice, academic and/or personal perspective, the topic of professionalization tends to raise many questions, sometimes leading to vigorous debate, for those engaged in health care ethics. As part of exploring professionalization from a Canadian perspective, the papers in this issue tackle some of these questions, offering up reflections for the reader’s consideration. Other papers address conceptual and practical approaches for further work in this area, including the possible development of practice standards, while still others provide relevant historical and contextual (i.e., Canadian) details. The papers range from being more descriptive and formal in style to more conversational and personal, to a translated (French to English) talk. These different ‘‘voices’’, I believe, add to the appreciation of the personal and practice aspects of what we do in health care ethics. Indeed, a quick scan of the paper titles in this issue indicates that there are many ‘‘threads’’ to follow related to exploring professionalization. In our discussions about professionalization and in preparation for a national symposium (see Frolic and Practicing Healthcare Ethicists Exploring Professionalization 2012 for a full description), the members of Practicing Healthcare Ethicists Exploring Professionalization (PHEEP) could not help but appreciate that we were all drawn to this work for sometimes distinct, sometimes overlapping, reasons. These reasons fundamentally shaped how we wanted to approach considerations of professionalization, contributing to interest in a number of related avenues of inquiry about ‘‘what we do’’. Whether we are influenced by our experiences in the practice of healthcare ethics or our education and training, each of us could identify important projects to explore. It was also recognized (which comes as no surprise) that there are several descriptors and references used to denote those who are in healthcare ethics