So, what are you anyway?
So, what are you anyway?
Speak now or forever hold your peace!
The issues raised by the current situation in New Hampshire reach to the very core of your professional identity. Across the country, similar questions are being raised by licensing boards, credentialing commissions, and legislators.
Case manager beware: Your days of comfortably wearing two hats may be drawing to a close. It just might be time for case managers to gaze in the mirror and decide who they are and where they are headed as case management professionals.
Case managers should ask themselves these questions:
• Are you a nurse, social worker, or therapist who does case management, or are you first and foremost a case manager?
• Do you stand united with your case management peers from allied health care professions to maintain the traditional stance that case management is an advanced practice of a health care profession?
• Do case managers need to begin the process of establishing a separate and distinct case management profession?
• Do you erect barriers to practice that shut some health care professionals out of this growing field?
In the January 1998 issue of Case Management Advisor, we printed the results of a reader opinion poll on the current status of case management as an evolving profession. We asked our readers to tell us whether they thought case management was a profession, a specialty practice of a health care profession, or a role or task of a health care professional. Responses included:
• 65% said case management is a specialty practice of a health care profession.
• 26% said case management is a profession.
• 9% said case management is a role or task of a health care professional.
(The editors of CMA invite you to respond to the current environment. If you would like to share your case management philosophy, information about rulings or legislation impacting case managers in your state, or simply express your opinion on the qualifications for a case management professional, please e-mail lee.landenberger@ medec.com. Selected responses will appear in future issues of CMA as we continue to monitor issues that affect your professional practice.)
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