The Professional Status of Bioethics Consultation

Is bioethics consultation a profession? With few exceptions, the arguments and counterarguments about whether healthcare ethics consultation is a profession have ignored the historical and cultural development of professions in the United States, the ways social changes have altered the work and boundaries of all professions, and the professionalization theories that explain how modern societies institutionalize expertise in professions. This interdisciplinary analysis begins to fill this gap by framing the debate within a larger theoretical context heretofore missing from the bioethics literature. Specifically, the question of whether ethics consultation is a profession is examined from the perspectives of trait theory, Wilensky's five-stage process of professionalization, Abbott's interdependent system of professions, and Haug's deprofessionalization thesis. While healthcare ethics consultation does not meet the criteria to claim professional status, neither could most professions pass these ideal theoretical standards. Instead of a yes or no dichotomous response to the question, it is more helpful to envision a professionalization continuum with sales clerks or carpenters at one end and medicine or law at the other. During the past decade healthcare ethics consultation has been moving along this continuum toward greater professional status.