Message from Secretary General

What makes a Care Professional?

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Do we call ourselves professional by having acquired the knowledge and skills that a profession requires? In my PhD research on healthcare professionals, one of the factors I studied was professional identification – the perception of belongingness to the profession* whereby one’s behavior will be guided by the value and norms of the profession as a result of internalization of these values and norms. A doctor who has high professional identification will prioritise healing the patients over other incentives. I have found that although my subjects have acquired sufficient training in medical knowledge and skills, some of them have low professional identification.

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If you were sick, would you want to be treated by a healthcare professional who merely cares about how much money to get from you, or someone who really cares about their identity as a healthcare professional, whose calling is healing you?

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Now, imagine you are hiring a caregiver for your own parents, who gave you their hands to hold ever since you were a new-born. Now that they are old, whose hands do you entrust to hold them? Will you be ok with just a caregiver who is equipped with the knowledge and skills to handle the elderly, or someone who has not only the knowledge and skills, but also the caring attitude to bring joy and meaning to the elderly?

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In this Association, we strive to help our members find their identity in being a care professional, who wears this identity with pride, dignity and self-worth.

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Besides being affected by their professional identification, healthcare professional’s providence of the best and right care to their patients are affected by whether they have passion, or whether they believe they can do so. In this Association, we strive to provide a platform whereby care professionals’ passion in providing care will be increased by our different activities, training, exposure, networking and international collaboration. By bringing in the best practice from our international counterparts, we provide the support that our members need to empower them to do things that are beyond what they are asked to do by local clients – and what they think they can do. Here, we will give members the inner voice they need, telling them that: “persevere on and have joy, this is what you want to do, and believe in yourself, you can do it”.

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Only such care professionals will be able to address the holistic needs of older persons, which are more than just medical or physiological aspects. They also include social aspects – the needs to interact with family, friends and the community; cognitive aspects – the needs to memorize facts, process information, retrieve memories, focus attention and solve problems; and psychological aspects – the needs to be acknowledged, free in doing what they desire, and competent in doing things effectively.

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The answer to what makes a care professional, therefore, entails the right knowledge, skills and attitude – professional identification, passion, and belief in oneself – in serving not only the medical and physiological needs, but also the social, cognitive and psychological needs of our clients.

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The key mission of MASOC CARE is to develop care professionals in the above sense.

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To empower our profession as a whole, this Association will facilitate interaction and integration among different component members of the social care ecosystem such as aged care homes, healthcare facilities, retirement properties, caregiver app, financing, and public policies. To enhance senior care service quality, care professionals often need to play a proactive role in disruptive innovations – making dramatic changes to the way local care industry functions to the entire senior care value chain. If individual care professionals would like to attain this vision herself or himself, it will be near impossible. However, by having strong professional identification as a care professional, strong passion in providing care, and strong belief in oneself to provide the best and right care, we, together, can leverage on the strength of the Association as an industry representative body to lobby with various stakeholders and to make this dream come true.

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Malaysian care, global standard – let us make this a reality.