Page 38 - Foundations of Naturopathic Medicine

Purpose and Conventions
why create a timeline?
the profession, is key among stakeholders in dealing with new medical professions and interest groups. Specifically, what does the profession brings to the common good? What are the profession’s principles, values and qualifications to practice their scope of practice with integrity, safely and effectively? How will the public recognize that? What is the status of regional jurisdictional, national and global consensus on standards, safety, efficacy, and how are such processes and guidelines established?
To members and associates of the naturopathic community, this timeline is a tool by which to remember and document shared history
to deepen self-knowledge and understanding of the contexts in which they live and work. It shows the profession not only where it has been, but also who it has been. A broader readership may approach the timeline as an illustrated model of how professions develop, and as a tool for observing patterns which typically are repeated with variations across professions over time. Human experience, interpersonal interaction, the process of sociocultural change and institutional development exhibit similarities, diversities and continuity over time and within any era in which professions have formed.
The ‘looking back’ facilitated by this timeline provides an invaluable map of the journey as experienced
(i.e., ‘what happened’) and also the specific routes pursued as these events were navigated in their respective historical contexts (i.e., ‘how’ historical individuals, groups and actions shaped events and how the environment responded). Interpreted with wisdom, a timeline may be akin to a collective roadmap, a collective organism, a living network of relationships, allowing members of the profession to use events of the past to interpret current events, to perceive patterns and to anticipate, navigate and influence a dynamic and healthy future.
How to continue developing a dynamic and collaborative record that lives into the future.
Today, naturopathic medicine is an active change agent emerging and maturing within an evolving paradigm of global medical practice. Guiding the profession wisely within that process, therefore, assumes immense importance. The authors hope this timeline will help show where the naturopathic profession has been, where it is going, and how it might achieve its next evolutionary steps. We invite you to participate in the Timeline’s growth and development by submitting new information, comments, and corrections to us at the exhibit and through the foundationsproject.com website.
Professional Formation - the processes by which professions mature; differentiating ‘professional formation’ from ‘professionalization’:
Current literature about developing professions (including medical professions) tends to focus on the processes of ‘professionalization’ (or ‘professionalizing’) and ‘professionalism,’ with the ultimate outcome of ‘legitimation.’ In medicine, ‘professionalizing’ is described as, “... a process by which a heterogeneous collection of individuals is gradually recognized, by both themselves and other members of society, as constituting a relatively homogeneous and distinct occupational group. (ref 7) One component in this transformation ... is the tendency for the emerging group to coalesce around a particular configuration
of knowledge” (Shortt, 1983, p. 52). Yet, a profession develops within the context of socioeconomic and cultural influences that greatly affect its development. ‘Professional formation,’ by contrast, is a process internal to the profession that enables it to respond to external influences, by developing indicators of
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