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Teaching Conflict: Professionalism and Medical Education

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Abstract

Resistance by physicians, medical researchers, medical educators, and medical students to pharmaceutical industry influence in medicine is often based on the notion that physicians (guided by the ethics of their profession) and the industry (guided by profit) are in conflict. This criticism has taken the form of a professional movement opposing conflict of interest (COI) in medicine and medical education and has resulted in policies and guidelines that frame COI as the problem and outline measures to address this problem. In this paper, I offer a critique of this focus on COI that is grounded in a broader critique of neo-liberalism, arguing it individualizes the relationship between physicians and industry, too neatly delineates between the two entities, and reduces the network of social, economic, and political relations to this one dilemma.

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Notes

  1. Kassierer acknowledges that a lot of those policies were not particularly restrictive and failed to eliminate the most egregious practices like paid participation in speakers bureaux.

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Conflict of Interest

The author declares no potential conflict of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author discloses receipt of the following financial support for the research of this article:

2010 Ontario Graduate Scholarship: $15,000

2009 Ontario Graduate Scholarship: $15,000

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  1. Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    K. J. Holloway

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Correspondence to K. J. Holloway.

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Holloway, K.J. Teaching Conflict: Professionalism and Medical Education. Bioethical Inquiry 12, 675–685 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-015-9648-2

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