Doctors, patients and society - a matter of trust.

Dr. Richard and Sylvia Cruess have a long association with the MUHC and with the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University (BIOs).In this series of podcasts, they provide an over-view of both the practical and ethical issues at play in defining professionalism and in maintaining a viable social contract between physicians and society.

At the MUHC, Dr. Sylvia Cruess was Director of Professional Services at the Royal Victoria Hospital from 1978-1995 and previously had been the director of the Metabolic Day Centre. Dr. Richard Cruess was Dean of Medicine at McGill from 1981-1995 and previously had been chair of orthopedics at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Since 1995, they have been based at the Centre for medical Education at McGill where their work is focused on lecturing and publishing about medical professionalism—what it means, how to teach it and how to evaluate it.


  1. Physicians as both healers and as professionals

  2. Medical professionalism: Individual and group responsibilities

  3. The changing professional role of physicians

  4. The professional model for organizing the delivery of health care

  5. Influences on the social contract

  6. Expectations of the individual and of the profession

  7. When expectations are not met

  8. Negotiating the social contract


You may also wish to consult the following papers:

Profession: A Working Definition for Medical Educators

Professionalism: an ideal to be sustained

Role modelling—making the most of a powerful teaching strategy

Expectations and Obligations: professionalism and medicine’s social contract with society