Professional excellence, an ethical value

If professionalism must be understood as a virtue, it is important to specify what qualities must constitute professional excellence. Aristotle, the great theorist of virtues, serves as a guide here to discover and determine which virtues should adorn health practice.

Qualities to achieve professional excellence

In addition to traditionally recognized values, such as benevolence or respect, special emphasis is placed on the importance of care, a new value, which has something to do with the greater visibility of women in society and in the health professions.

He careful It is a value that complements that of justice and that takes on special relevance at a time when curing the patient can no longer be the only goal of medicine.

Which leads to trust, a trust relationship It should replace the classic paternalistic relationship that did not take into account the patient's role.

A series of social, cultural, political, organizational and also ethical changes force health professions to evolve towards a patient-centered model, which takes into account their ability to make decisions about their own body, as well as the importance of communication and dialogue to face complex and difficult decisions.

In the Verbal communication There are words and forms of expression that generate feelings of rejection and displeasure in those who hear them or, on the contrary, that provoke a positive attitude in the recipient, depending on how we interpret them in one way or another.

Listen to us to answer, not to understand us. It's not about giving an opinion, it's about being there, understanding.

Besides the active listening It is essential to give the importance it deserves to nonverbal language, it is very difficult to hide certain expressions in the negotiation of a conflict, as it is, as we can say, an instantaneous reaction from the brain, different from the body.

We can be “experts” if we master this area, because the emotional state of the people mediated is automatic and instantaneous.

Another fundamental virtue in health practice is the virtue of prudence, which today we can call self-regulation.

It is understood by self-regulation the control that a person exercises over their emotions, their actions and their thoughts. This process helps the individual meet his or her goals. It can be said that self-regulation implies mastery of behavior and cognitive processes, for example.

At the International School of Mediation, within the health specialty, we work in depth on these concepts with the aim of having training that offers quality care and professional excellence.