your and the others' professions

Professional identities and territorial boundaries

Students were learning about their future professions. They were placed in multidisciplinary teams learning about other professionals often before understanding what their own roles would be.

Disciplines have their own culture, which includes a philosophy towards patient care. The differing emphases can create misunderstanding and lack of sympathy by members of one discipline towards members of another discipline. The culture also results in a specific language or jargon which each discipline utilizes for communication. (Oliver Hayes, personal communication, 1 April 1998)

Before understanding the roles of others, it was important to go through a professional socialization process. When students had an initial opportunity to identify with and understand their own discipline, it was easier to set aside turf issues and discuss how each discipline related to teaming and contributed to patient care.

Lessons learned from implementing multidisciplinary health professions educations models in community settings

Harris, D.L; Henry, R.C; Bland, C.J; Starnaman, S.M; Voytek, K.L

Journal of interprofessional care Vol 17, N 1, 2003

p16

The point that the authors are trying to make is that shaping your own identity as member of one profession is very important.

But why not learning this (about our professions) while you are learning about the identities of the other professions.

This might help to fight the prejudices, which at the end of the day are unavoidable anyway.Is it really that bad to learn about others first?

It is when we (know about us and) compare with others that we judge or even when we are looking at them without a proper context that we start to consider our own pre-conceptions.

Maybe if we learn about other first, we dont have any pre-conception and pre-judgements. We have a blank piece of paper.

When we learn about us then after or along learning about others, we can place things in good context, I reckon we can be more objective.