The Importance of Professionalism
To start talking about the importance of professionalism, we may start to say that professionalism is a widely discussed topic. People from everywhere have a definition or at least one good example about it. However, Atkins (2013), goes beyond and explains to us that professionalism is even more than just being a professional. He explains that worldwide describes professionalism based on three major facts: being professional, being paid, and a high level of knowledge. Even though he agrees with this definition; he tries to portray a different analogy to this. He explains that most sociologists describe a professional or even professionalism based on their actions, behaviors, and attitudes. The attitude leads to behavior which leads to an action that leads to an attitude so on, and all these describe us as professionals.
But for Atkins (2013), professionalism is not just a simple definition. He strongly believes that professionalism is a process or journey. Furthermore, he uses his large experience of being a member of Evergreen’s Alpine Rescue Team (ART) for about 40 years and helping several people with human factors, risks, decision-making, and professionalism to evidentiate that the importance of professionalism is paramount. Based on his large experience and knowledge, he provides a different point of view by presenting professionalism as four steps which are: knowing, doing, helping, and learning. He provides examples from his years of serving to the ART and then defines that a person that holds those skills is professional. knowing will make you capable to handle situations and solve problems, doing you will put into practice what you have learned, helping you serve to help others, and learning will make you up to date.
To keep talking about the importance of professionalism, we may also talk about ethics. Both are highly connected and to help us to understand more about it, Santa Clara University (2015) describes ethics as a guide to help us with standards and behaviors that classify us as human beings who act based on ethical decisions. But they also call our attention to that identifying ethical standards is not an easy task. Also, they explain that many philosophers and ethicists help to identify different sources of ethical standards that are not based on feeling, religion, law, accepted social practice, or science. They call it a framework for ethical decision making which is structured on: recognize an ethical issue, get the facts, evaluate alternatives actions, make a decision and test it, and act and reflect on the outcome. This framework is a very powerful tool for a professional who will handle several situations that will require making decisions.
Additionally, professionalism often handles moral situations. According to Abumrad (2007), a moral sense is a unique and special quality that only we human beings hold. We have our perception to judge everything based on our morality. Animals will never have this sense because it’s one common sense that only we pursue. So, it defines us as a society, individual, and also professional.
According to Newspaper Article (1945), A terrible fact in history showed us that a man, in particular, was very diligent by using all these professional skills before taking an action that will change world history. This man was Harry S. Truman, he was the name behind the release of the Atomic Bomb in Japan. In his papers, he showed President Roosevelt his concerns to save as many as possible American and Japanese lives. He had on his hands the responsibility to act and follow orders, but at the same time, he highlighted that he had feelings as human beings. Not an easy decision, he had to face this dilemma and put an end to the Second World War. Even though the act by itself is terrible, he conducted it very professionally, he pondered and analyzed all circumstances before moving forward making sure millions of lives would be saved and the War would have finished.
References
Atkins, D. [TEDxYouth]. (2013, May 4). Being a professional [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLv7sdGJWPI
Abumrad, J. (Host). (2007, August 13). Morality [Audio podcast episode]. In Radiolab. WNYC Studios. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91508-morality
Newspaper Article. (1945, December 8). Chronicles of World War II.
Santa Clara University. (2015, August 1). A framework for ethical decision making. Markkula center for applied ethics. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making/
