The quality of a publication by LEFO, Institute for Studies of the Medical Profession, is gaining international recognition.
Award-winning lead author, Lawrence P. Casalino, medical doctor and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, and guest editor for the collection of articles in Professions & Professionalism, Berit Bringedal, sociologist and senior researcher at LEFO – Institute for Studies of the Medical Profession. Photo: private
Over the years, the Institute for Studies of the Medical Profession has arranged a number of international, interdisciplinary research meetings, several of them resulting in scientific publications. This was also the case with the symposium that LEFO arranged in the summer of 2014, the topic of which was the relationship between doctors’ professional satisfaction, quality of medical care, and the governance and organisation of the health services (Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association 2015; 135: 971). LEFO had invited researchers from Europe and the USA to give presentations on various aspects of this issue at the symposium, which was funded by the Research Council of Norway, the Norwegian Medical Association, the Sickness Assistance and Pension Scheme for doctors, and the Centre for the Study of Professions at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. The presentations and commentaries have since been turned into articles and published in a special issue of the journal Professions & Professionalism (no. 1/2015) of which LEFO’s senior researcher, Berit Bringedal, was the guest editor.
One of the articles in this special issue was recently named as the best article on medical professionalism by the American Board of Internal Medicine (www.abimfoundation.org). The article (https://journals.hioa.no/index.php/pp/article/view/954) discusses the significance of doctors’ health and job satisfaction on the quality of their medical work. The authors, Casalino & Crosson, present the research in this field (see page 851) and conclude that health and satisfaction are important for quality, though more data and better studies are needed. See also full text versions and a more detailed description at www.legeforsk.org.
«We greatly appreciate this recognition. It also shows the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration across national borders, and the need to eliminate the sharp divide that has existed until now between medical research on one hand, and the social science perspective on the other,» comments Karin Isaksson Rø, LEFO’s director.
