User talk:Alwood

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 * Please note that the About page from Institute on Medicine As A Profession seems directly copied to the medical professionalism article. Copyvio tag therefore inserted. I have also raised a discussion at the Clinical Medicine project talk page on the use of the term 'medical professionalism' as it is not how I would havbe interpreted the term, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine. David Ruben Talk 23:36, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Official explanatory message:
 * Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We appreciate your contributions to the medical professionalism article, but we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. Perhaps you would like to rewrite the article in your own words. For more information, take a look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Happy editing! David Ruben Talk 00:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Medical Professionalism
The following is meant to be constructive re approach to take in wikipedia re article about organisations one is involved in, or with possibly contentious statements. Please read carefully Five pillars and some of the guidelines and polices I link to below. Then please feel free to ask any questions on policy to myself or other editors, or start a discussion thread on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine as to the proposal for writing an article on this topic (Medical professionalism you will notice was speedily deleted as a possible copyvio)

re ''I am the Director of Communications for the Institute on Medicine as a Profession and therefore have the right to copy the deffinition that we have for medical professionalism. It is, therefore, "in my words."'' Sorry quite a lot of stuff for you :-) David Ruben Talk 22:56, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I would point out the wikipedia license is Text of the GNU Free Documentation License, so anything submitted, may be copied by any other site and made accessable to others either free or commercially (the GFDL must still apply) - so just check you are aware of implications (basically anyone then has right to copy, alter, edit & distribute material).
 * Generally creating an article about oneself or an organisation one is involved with may be seen as WP:Vanity - as you may be perceived as lacking independant neutral viewpoint. Certainly one should not add external links to ones own organisation (see WP:External links guideline).
 * Many of the issues raised are of course interesting and important. However your definition of the term "medical professionalism", with implications as a backlash against forced management of healthcare organisations, is certainly not the rather narrower meaning I or any UK doctor I know would recognise. In other words it starts with the general accepted understanding of the term and then takes it forward as a campaigning political movement. This is likely to be seen as biased Point of View and wikipedia demands WP:Neutral point of view. Is there some other article title that may be used, e.g. Medical professionalism and healthcare systems or Medical professionalism and healthcare provision or Medical professionalism under healthcare systems or some such qualifier that indicates that the subject is both about the bioethics of medical practice and with the specific regard to how it interacts with external pressures ?
 * I appreciate your connection to the institute places you in an excellent position to point out key parts of the website and advise us on key aspects of the debate, but I'm afraid that you really should be neither writing the article itself or directly adding external links. Instead please do "spur discussion" on the Clinical Medicine project page (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine) and let other editors decide whether overall topic (i.e. being a professional and how that conflicts with aims of health organisations) is notable or not for an encyclopaedia and to write the article. Then if you then have suggestions or feel an external link should be considered, raise the matter on the article's talk page and let another objective editor decide whether to so include or not.
 * Again I agree the conflict of interests (doctor's self interests, doctor's concerns for their individual patients, healthcare systems to their target population, administrators concerns for meeting measureable but clinically dubious targets, heathcare systems to their paymasters etc etc) is both interesting and important - but the contentious issues this raises will need very careful writing if not to fall foul of WP:NPOV and also will need to WP:Cite to WP:Verify the opinions as those from WP:Reliable sources (otherwise seen as personal opinion and this would breach WP:No original research)