[Employment, a declining value].

Abstract

Because of increase in unemployment, and the consequent lack of job security and exclusion it leads to, the positive bond associated with work has, globally, been broken. Success both in professional and private life has become a competing aspiration, with a decreasing tendency to sacrifice one's private life for one's work. Physicians are also affected by this tendency and a major link has been broken in the attachment of the medical corps to their work. The fact that work is considered as a declining value, also in the health sector, corresponds to specific economic and societal phenomena. The repositioning of health in the economic activity, the re-definition of the medical professions with their specific competence, are presently under discussion.