University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Health Econ. 2010 Dec;19(12):1461-77. doi: 10.1002/hec.1564.
Professionalism can be defined generally as adhering to the accepted standards of a profession and placing the interests of the public above the individual professional's immediate interests. In the field of medicine, professionalism should lead at least some practitioners in developing countries to effectively care for their patients despite the absence of extrinsic incentives to do so. In this study we examine the behavior of 80 practitioners from the Arusha region of Tanzania for evidence of professionalism. We show that about 20% of these practitioners behave professionally, and almost half of those who do so practice in the public sector. These professional health care workers provide high quality care even when they work in an environment that does not reward this effort, a finding that has important implications for the use of performance-based incentives.
专业性通常可以定义为遵守一个行业的公认标准，并将公众利益置于个人专业人员的直接利益之上。在医学领域，尽管缺乏外在激励，但专业性应该至少促使一些发展中国家的从业者有效地照顾他们的病人。在这项研究中，我们研究了来自坦桑尼亚阿鲁沙地区的 80 名从业者的行为，以寻找专业性的证据。我们表明，这些从业者中约有 20%表现出专业性，而且几乎一半的从业者在公共部门工作。这些专业的医疗保健工作者即使在不奖励这种努力的环境中也提供高质量的护理，这一发现对基于绩效的激励措施的使用具有重要意义。
