Integrity: Professional

Abstract

Professional integrity has emerged in the last 20 years as a response to various claims and requests from patients and society, in the wake of the patient rights movement, scientific progress, and societal pressure. It signifies medical collective standards and principles of action which are irreducible to personal conscience and which serve as a tool for doctors to forge their collective identity. The concept of professional integrity has been used to reaffirm doctors’ opposition to assisted death, “futile” care, enhancement techniques, some forms of genetic screening and research practices, and participation in objectionable acts like capital punishment and female circumcision. Upholders of professional integrity might be accused of being paternalistic and conservative, as well as of presenting a purely defensive view of the ethical core of medicine. However, discussing novel issues in terms of professional integrity encourages a collective self-reflection on the purpose and values that should constitute doctors’ own professional identity and goals. Also, the content of professional integrity can, and does, evolve through time and can be complemented by personal virtues like altruism, justice, empathy, and compassion. Finally, it can be understood as a basic “capacity” for thinking difficult professional challenges anew.