Responsible professionalism

Many individuals have identified additional characteristics and responsibilities of a professional. For instance, Abraham Flexner first idenhfied the attributes of a profession in 1915, on which Isidor Thorner elaborated in 1942 (Buerki and Vottero, 1996). One of the attributes identified by Flexner and Thorner is that the profession provides a relahvely specific funchon that its practitioners depend on for their livelihood and social status. Professionals perform the necessary functions for society that society cannot provide for itself. In return for this service, society grants professionals special privileges, such as internal control and autonomy in decision making within their realms of experhse. In accepting this responsibility, professionals generally rely on a code of ethics (see Appendix A for the Code of Ethics for Pharma-... 

When crisis strikes, most people look to the news media for information about the extent and details of the threats or disasters at hand, for blow-by-blow accounts of important developments, and, depending on the nature of the calamity, for instructions of what to do and what not to do. This attention offers crisis managers and response professionals the opportunity to communicate information and messages to the directly affected communities and to the larger national, sometimes even international, audience as well. Indeed, as soon as citizens become aware of impending or actual disasters, such as devastating hurricanes or floods, they tend to turn first... 

Whether one agrees with the critics or defenders of the news media, for crisis responders the lessons of the 9/11 horror and the anthrax case are compelling Although response professionals must focus primarily on preparedness measures in their specialized fields, they also need to establish chains of command with knowledgeable and articulate spokespersons designed to deal with the equally important tasks of public information and press relations. This lesson was further reinforced following Hurricane Katrina s impact on the Gulf Coast. 

Moreover, regardless of what type of emergency arises, reporters and others in the news media have different priorities and interests than do nurses, other emergency response professionals, and public officials. In the words of one terrorism expert, the... 

Whenever they release statements to the press or are interviewed by journalists, crisis managers and disaster response professionals in general must be sure that the information they provide is accurate and the split-second judgments they make are sound, otherwise they confuse, frustrate, and alarm an already traumatized public. For example, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson told Americans that the first lethal anthrax case in Florida was an isolated case with no evidence of terrorism (World News Tonight, 2001). This was a rush to judgment that he reversed after several more anthrax infections when he admitted that the United States had never experienced this type of terrorism (Ricchiardi, 2001). 

There is no doubt that reporters will question all kinds of sources regardless of their proximity to the crisis and regardless of their expertise. If crisis managers and response professionals cooperate with the press, however, especially by providing information and finding answers to reporters questions, they are in an excellent position to help shape the news and the predominant story lines. With this in mind, crisis responders can and should prepare their media/public information approaches for the worst-case scenario. Just as public and private actors in the area of health care and other responders plan for their particular roles during all kinds of disasters ahead of time, just as they participate in drills to improve their readiness, they should prepare for interacting with journalists and others in the news... 

Again, all of this is not to say that those who deal with major emergencies should be denied access automatically or readily. This would breed resentment and ill will on the part of the news media and perhaps cost response professionals the generous access to the print press and the electronic media in times when they... 

The author argues that every nurse and all other emergency response professionals should have a rudimentary knowledge in handling reporters and other members of the press corps. Why ... 

In what ways do most reporters and media organizations cooperate with emergency responders in the face of serious disasters Why are nurses and other response professionals well advised to seek cooperation with the media and avoid confrontation ... 

In spite of the positive uses of hypnosis in medicine and psychotherapy and as an aid to learning, and in spite of decades of work by responsible professionals to educate the public to have a more positive view of hypnosis, in common usage hypnosis is still usually referred to as a trance. Hypnosis has negative connotations a hypnotized person is thought to lack animation, to be pardy asleep, to be in Ae power of the superior mind and will of the hypnotist, to be controlled and manipulated. 

The committee also examines how emergency response professionals estimate the potential population exposure from a chemical event, reviews emergency response activities and public responses, and discusses how the events are communicated to local news media and interested citizens groups. These communications have important implications, since they affect how political leaders, regulators, and the general public view the chemical demilitarization program. 

Control of toxicity, whether in wastewater treatment plants, or in war-ravaged regions, depends on timely and relevant information. The responsible professional must know what is happening not merely what happened in order to recommend and to take effective remedial action. 

Don t dress too casually. Your interviewer wants to hire a responsible professional. Make sure you look like one. 

Technology s critics pointed not only to the problems inherent in technical systems, but also to the need for technical experts to develop philosophical introspection. The liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, for example, called for responsible professionals to reorient the technostructure, as they were the only ones with expertise to under-... 

In the 1960s, civil rights organizing altered Paschkis s understanding of responsible professionalism in a technological age. In addition to fighting the injustices of Jim Crow, he joined an eclectic network of intellectuals, labor leaders, and scientific luminaries who linked the plight of... 

Morris Uewellyn Cooke 1922 method to human affairs industrial domination of engineering professional societies responsibility professional calling... 

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