Military Medicine: One Profession Not Two
Abstract
Medical professionals preserve life, and military professionals manage violence. What professional tensions arise for the military physician, who straddles these two professions? Since September 11th, scholars have approached military medicine as a mixed agency problem, suggesting tensions result because physicians hold competing loyalties between patients (soldiers) and their employer (the military). Moreover, the literature focuses on wartime tensions and proffers overly simplified algorithms or impractical solutions for their resolution. Using institutional analysis, I examine 35 scenarios, both peacetime and wartime, in terms of stakeholder interactions and the causal contexts in which they occur. This method reveals that the tensions military physicians encounter are not aberrations to be overcome or mitigated by privileging one profession's value over another in each specific case. On the contrary, these tensions compose the very heart of military medicine and the physician's professional domain. I argue, contra the mixed agency frame, that military medicine is a unique, independent profession. Medicine, Military; Physicians; Causation; Institutional analysis; Military profession; Patients; Soldiers; Stress (Psychology)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 13, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA599142
Entities
People
- Anastasia M. Mckay
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College