This is hot topic for Faculty, Mentors, Employers, and our patients and they all have different elements of professionalism that are important to them and so we as students and working Therapists must be aware and meet their expectations. This may sound daunting with all the legislation that outlines our professional conduct but in my opinion these legal elements rarely are the factors that cause problems or conflict. It is the soft hard to define attitudes conduct and behaviors that are often the source of heated concern.
I have often heard individuals proclaim; “how being late is unprofessional and unacceptable behavior!” Clearly this could be considered as true if the individual is wantonly late and has a casual attitude towards punctuality but is this often true? In our complex world of public transit, required lining up for everything, and just the general chaos of daily life is it not more often true that being late is often out of our control. To me stating; "that an individual should just have planned better", is arrogant and makes many unsubstantiated insinuations. In my personal opinion I sometimes think it could be considered that unreasonable intolerance of behaviors such as lateness could be considered an unprofessional attitude in itself. But I think we can all see why punctuality is a coveted trait in any profession where interdependence is a major operating factor. So what can we do to demonstrate professionalism with regards to being on time? In my opinion I think students can demonstrate professionalism in this regard by clearly striving to be on time and then acknowledging the problem with the inevitable occurrence of being late occurs. When late, give apologies first, rationale second, then confirmation of your acceptance of responsibility and finally outline how you will strive to not allow this to happen is all that we can offer and expect. For acceptance by our colleagues and coworkers we must make sure that this problem is infrequent and genuinely something we will try to resolve. I think we all know individuals who perhaps have a problem with time management or are often late. I propose there are two approaches to this problem, if it is truly an attitude and callous disregard for others that is the cause of the problem then strict discipline with clear consequences maybe the solution. But for those other problematic individuals that are trying their best but still are problematic then maybe we need to look inward for a broader definition of professionalism and look to understanding and tolerance rather than just anger and disgust towards the problematic individual.
I am using this example of problematic punctuality as an example of how we as professionals may need to set standards of conduct and behavior but also how truly professional behaviors force us to be tolerant and understanding when viewing the conduct and actions of others.
What do you think?
