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Issue 2
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2017
|
I
ssues and
P
eople
Q
Q
Q
Could professional self-regulation become
a thing of the past?
What does it mean to be a self-regulating profession? According Dr. Tracey Adams, professor and chair of
sociology at Western University and an expert on professional regulation, our understanding of professional
regulation has changed with time.
In particular, the idea that it upholds the public interest has been debated in countries around the world, resulting in
changes to how some professions are regulated. Canada, according to a paper Dr. Adams recently published in the journal
Professions and Professionalism
1
, is considered by some to be the “last bastion of unfettered self-regulation” in the world. She
spoke with CDA about the changing views of professional self-regulation and the implications for Canadian dentistry.
Dr.Tracey Adams
It’s also important to recognize that some people,
including politicians, are increasingly skeptical
about professions and their claims to serve the
public interest.
This interviewhasbeencondensed
andedited.
Theviewsexpressedarethoseofthe
authoranddonotnecessarilyreflect
theopinionsorofficialpoliciesofthe
CanadianDentalAssociation.
What are the key points you make
about professional self-regulation in
your article?
I focus on the changing nature of
professional self-regulation in Canada
and argue that how we define the public
interest has changed. It’s long been said that
professional self-regulation is in the public
interest but it isn’t clear what people mean
when they say this. For my paper, I looked
at how public interest has been historically
defined, especially in government reports
and legislative records.
How has our understanding of the
public interest changed?
Historically, it was defined in terms of raising
practitioner quality and establishing high
entry standards. In that way, public interest
and professional interest went hand-in-hand
because everybody benefitted when
services were of higher quality.
Around the 1960s there was an upswell
in the belief that professions couldn’t be
trusted to uphold the public interest and
perhaps professions were more interested in
pursuing their own interests. This sentiment
found its way into public and government
discourse and shifted the definition slightly
to reflect this feeling that professionals
needed more oversight from government
in order to uphold the public interest, with
a new emphasis on fairness, efficiency,
accountability and cost.
How is the public interest currently
defined?
Most recently, I’m seeing changes again in
some of the government discourse. The
public interest is increasingly being defined
tladams@uwo.ca