Marlot Kuiper

43 Standardization in professional settings Although the sentence does not appear in Hippocratic texts verbatim, it can be argued that it does come from it at least in essence (Gill, 2018). ‘Doing no harm’ could naturally be understood as ‘do not make mistakes’ such as wrong site surgery, or administering wrong medication. The takeaway point of “first do no harm” however, is that in some cases, it may be better to do nothing rather than intervening and potentially causing more harm than good (ibid). Making decisions about complex, unique cases, requires professionals to ‘know’ when to treat, when not to treat, and if to treat, how to treat. In making these decisions, medical doctors rely on attributes like specialized knowledge and skills gained through enduring training, a rudimentary awareness of ethics to act for the sake of the public good, and the freedom to act on their judgment. Attributes that are argued to make up ‘professionalism’. The first section of this chapter aims to answer the question: “What are professionals and professional work, and what transitions can be identified? 2.2.1 Classic notions of ‘professionalism’ Throughout the years, many scholars turned their attention to ‘professionalism’ and tried to disentangle what it entails. Larson (1977) argues that in most cases, social scientists come up with an unambiguous answer: professions are occupations with special power and prestige. For a long time, sociologists of professional occupations even differentiated professionalism as a special means to organise and control work (Evetts, 2011). Freidson (2001) for example identified professionalism as a ‘third logic’; the third principle of the division of labour, next to the market and the organisation. Classic examples of these powerful professions are lawyers, engineers and university professors (Krause, 1996). Medicine though, is often considered the ‘archetypal’ professional occupation (Fox, 1992; Freidson, 1988). Although the specific attributes that are argued to compose the ideal typical profession may vary, there is some substantial scholarly agreement on the general dimensions. Despite some vocabulary discrepancy, scholars generally refer to three dimensions, or three ‘sets of attributes’ that distinct professional’s work from other occupations. By combining these insights about the ideal type of professionalism (e.g. Evetts, 2003; Freidson, 1970; Starr, 1982; Wilensky, 1964), I frame the dimensions as follows; The cognitive dimension (following e.g. Larson, 1977; Starr, 1982) refers to the body of knowledge and techniques that is required to perform complex work. 2