SOCY 200 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Naturopathy

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 200
• Professor: Cynthia Levine-Rasky

Document Summary

While a professional occupation, the traditional status of the doctor may be eroding. Give some examples of how and why this is so. Doctors as a profession is constructed through a variety of traits involving specific education, training, rules and ethics that they must adhere to. Doctors have long been seen as a profession which hold enormous amount of power and prestige for three specific reasons. First, traditionally doctors hold more knowledge over the general public in regards to medicine and had greater access to this. Second, the greater social distance, for example, socioeconomic status between client and doctors. Third, the greater ability for doctors to organizes and assert power as a collective. However despite these three factors, the profession of doctors and their status has been eroding resulting in less power. To begin, widespread access to medical knowledge courtesy of the internet.