2009-The Physician of the Future English and Catalan

3. H OW TO BRIDGE THE GAP 81 3.3. Employers Public and private health care organisations, employers of doctors and other health professionals, should undertake reforms geared to improving how they are deploying them to perform health care tasks, since they are the ones with the required knowledge, and are, without doubt, their most important asset. $e value of health professionals for health care organisations is much greater than re&ected in their salaries and should play an institutional role that is more important than the one played by the employees of a standard organisation producing standard goods or services. Health care organisations are not industrial organisations where know- how is located at director levels; instead they are knowledge intensive organisations where know-how lies where services are provided by the professionals. Professional knowledge being basically of tacit nature and used in a discretionary manner for the bene"t of patients cannot be as easily subjected to normalisation as academic knowledge that is of an explicit nature. As a consequence, the best professionals are not necessarily those that follow protocols and guidelines most strictly but rather those that know when and how they should deviate in their application for the bene"t of a given patient. Employer organisations should know how to align the physician’s commitment within a &exible working frame that allows them su#cient self-management capacity to develop their leadership role. $ey should adopt &exible working systems capable of priming jobs well done over compliance of established procedures. Since the medical professional has to deal with a complex web of interests and con&icting priorities, employer organisations ought to develop incentive mechanisms, besides the "nancial ones, and learn how to bene"t from internal motivations driving physicians in order to maximise their performance. In this regard they should now use the possibilities o'ered by implementation of regulations concerning “Continuing Professional Development” and “ Professional Career”, ensuring the two are not mixed