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Doctors on Status and Respect: A Qualitative Study

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Abstract

While doctors generally enjoy considerable status, some believe that this is increasingly threatened by consumerism, managerialism, and competition from other health professions. Research into doctors’ perceptions of the changes occurring in medicine has provided some insights into how they perceive and respond to these changes but has generally failed to distinguish clearly between concerns about “status,” related to the entitlements associated with one’s position in a social hierarchy, and concerns about “respect,” related to being held in high regard for one’s moral qualities. In this article we explore doctors’ perceptions of the degree to which they are respected and their explanations for, and responses to, instances of perceived lack of respect. We conclude that doctors’ concerns about loss of respect need to be clearly distinguished from concerns about loss of status and that medical students need to be prepared for a changing social field in which others’ respect cannot be taken for granted.

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Competing Interests

The authors have no financial or non-financial conflicts of interest.

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This research was funded by a grant from the Sydney Medical School Foundation, University of Sydney. The Sydney Medical School Foundation played no role in the research or the writing of this article.

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Correspondence to Wendy Lipworth.

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Lipworth, W., Little, M., Markham, P. et al. Doctors on Status and Respect: A Qualitative Study. Bioethical Inquiry 10, 205–217 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9430-2

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