Role Acceptance
Social roles are accepted by the individuals who act in them. Insofar as individuals choose the role of doctor or other health professional, they are morally responsible for their choices.
But again, there is need for some modification here; the collective values of society, or at least of certain social classes within society, are also determinants in these career decisions. For example, some young people entering medical school may have been highly influenced by their parents or high school. These authoritative bodies are expressing a collective view that being a doctor or health professional is a good thing. The young person’s freedom of choice may thus be, to some extent and in some cases, totally compromised, and their moral responsibility is affected by a subtle kind of duress. Equally, the young person’s knowledge of what they were letting themselves in for may have been skewed by another set of collective values — those expressed by the many fanciful medical soap operas. It could therefore be argued that these collective values will to some extent determine, or at least affect, the moral choices of some of those entering medical school. But of course, it is possible to leave medical school or resign the role, so these considerations perhaps amount to no more than the point that no action or decision is purely an individual one: all our decisions are to some extent influenced by the values of our society. But certainly, we can and do pass moral judgments on the morality of role acceptance. In view of the nature of the health care professions and their bearing on human good and harm, the responsibility for choosing the role of medical student is a moral one. Was the role chosen out of a sense of vocation or calling; in the hope of making money; or just because it seemed a respectable middle-class job? It is impossible to disentangle the factors that may affect such important decisions, but it is clear that to a greater or lesser extent, the assorted collective values of society as a whole will be important factors affecting individual responsibility.Moreover, while collective values certainly affect the moral responsibility of trainees for their decisions to enter the health professions, collective values also play an important part in administrative decisions as to whether to accept applicants to medical schools. Applicants must pass certain tests of intellect and personality, and these tests will be the same for all applicants.
Many medical schools will also interview candidates and ask the same set of questions to each interviewee. The questions asked of the applicants and the assessment of their answers will again express the collective values of the health professions at a certain point in history. In this way, the continuation of the traditional ethos of the medical profession is ensured by the selection process.
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