I came across this old piece of writing of mine while searching for another old writing somewhere in my old files. I have always found joy in writing, and have used my words to help organize my own thoughts. To my recollection, this particular piece below was not written with any intention for publication. I started it on a Tuesday in March of 2017 at 11:41pm (by the data on the file). This was undoubtedly the product of me quickly typing something out on a night shift while taking care of hospitalized patients. I seldom slept on night shifts. I did not write this with the intention of an audience at the time, but in reading it again, I think this one is worth sharing in its original and unedited form. My writing far predates the AI writing tools that are so prevalent today in 2026.
On Professionalism
When I was a 4th year medical student, I was told a definition of professionalism which stuck with me. My senior resident on medicine turned to me one cold Saturday in December and told me “being a professional means doing what you love even when you don’t love doing it.” I don’t know if that quote is hers or came from elsewhere, but it stuck with me. It was a definition I enjoyed because it was so different from the traditional definition, and in a way I felt did a better job capturing what we mean by professionalism in the 21st century. As a concept, I wish we could do away with the need for “professionalism,” in a traditional sense. During an academic-day lecture on the topic, a few of the features of a professional were brought up, including punctuality, sticking to your passion, detail-orientation, thoroughness regardless of situation, among others. The way I was raised, all of these are the characteristics of an “adult” regardless of professional status. That is the way well educated and reared people conduct themselves. The very notion of this wall of separation between “professionals” as being different from “non-professionals” bothers me, because it makes this assumption that those people do not have these same desirable characteristics.
Regardless of its necessity as a social construct, professionalism does provide for a streamlining, and in a way standardization of processes and interactions, and in turn provides one of the first grand strokes which paints the impression that those who seek the help of professionals walk away with. It allows for a ‘presumption of trust,’ of sorts; in a medical context—the relationship starts with a strong foundation—patients are predisposed to trust us. It is on the scaffold of professionalism that the therapeutic relationship is constructed, encounter by encounter. However, I feel it is also important to recognize those certain rarer instances in which professionalism can act as a barrier in itself—reminding patients of the social gulf between themselves and their care providers. Like all other things, the ‘right mix’ likely is somewhere closer to the middle, and of course varies wildly patient to patient and doctor to doctor.
-Bryan Pardo
