Abstract
This article is an analysis of conditions enabling the rise of the professional field of medicine in Sweden. The analysis is based mainly on second- ary data, while the use of primary data is restricted to official statistics. Primarily, it aims to study the conditions promoting professionalization in medicine. Important exogenous conditions were derived from early emerging nation state administration structures concerning policy and governance of public health, as well as a delegated supervision of professional health activities to the medical profession and the organization of a public national health care system. Professionalization strategies such as social organization of the medical profession and their use of a variety of legitimizing resources as tools for jurisdictional claims are considered as endogenous conditions. Broadly, the analysis shows a close relationship between the growth of professionalization in the field of medicine and the development of state prosperity in the Swedish welfare state.
Highlights
Conceptual toolsThe analysis is mainly based on Abbott’s conceptual tools for research of professions, in which central notions are that professions compete to gain control of task areas in terms of jurisdiction and that there are a range of possible settlements of these jurisdictional conflicts (Abbott, 1988, p. 33, pp. 69-79)
This article is an analysis of conditions enabling the rise of the professional field of medicine in Sweden
The article has discussed conditions promoting professionalization in medicine and a periodization of the historical development with some suggestions of qualitative and quantitative take-offs, which was an important aim of the forthcoming comparisons in the larger case study mentioned earlier
Summary
The analysis is mainly based on Abbott’s conceptual tools for research of professions, in which central notions are that professions compete to gain control of task areas in terms of jurisdiction and that there are a range of possible settlements of these jurisdictional conflicts (Abbott, 1988, p. 33, pp. 69-79). The early and rapid organizational growth in favour of a certain branch of medicine (acute somatic care) is here seen as consolidating the jurisdiction for the medical profession and its core task—which is to cure This is considered a quantitative take-off in the medical field in favour of hospital doctors and somatic care. The establishment of collegiums and increased social mobilization in terms of associations and unions are considered here as important formative events in the field, and as strong promoting conditions for the rise of professionalization in medicine. A new cognitive shift took place in the late 19th century, through the bacteriological breakthrough in 1858 and its implications for an effective means to kill bacteria This breakthrough constitutes the second qualitative take-off in the professional field of medicine, through the development of nosology as a strict etiological structure that pressed natural philosophical medicine aside. The image of a solid core of professional medical knowledge with a strong relation to science was present, which strengthened the conditions for professionalization even more
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