Professional hysteresis: the changing asymmetries of the medical profession in Türkiye

Abstract

This chapter aims to evaluate the sources of the complaining, protesting, and defensive attitude among Turkish physicians as a new type of professionalism. In the context of the rapid growth of the health-care system, how does the transformation of structures within the profession shape this new professionalism? This study draws from current conceptual debates on professionalism while advancing existing findings on the medical profession in Türkiye. The research, based on interviews with physicians working in public hospitals in Istanbul, reveals that professional grievances have four dimensions: the quantitative dimension of the current workload, the qualitative dimension of patient behaviour, new bureaucratic asymmetries, and new collegial asymmetries. The analysis mainly focuses on the temporal dimension of professionalism within these four asymmetries and aims to explain the increasing complaining and defensive attitude of physicians by using Bourdieu's concept of hysteresis. It explores how physician professionalism resorts to past schemes of perception amid rapid changes in the structural conditions of the field. When asymmetries such as limited access to health care, the closed and privileged status of the profession, bureaucratic lack of control, and collegial solidarity—foundations of the protected type of professionalism—are eroded and reversed, a situation I term “professional hysteresis” emerges, without necessarily leading to connective professionalism. © The Editor and Contributors Severally 2025. All rights reserved.