Civilian Care in War: Lessons from Afghanistan

Military doctors and nurses, employees with a compound professional identity as they are neither purely soldiers nor simply doctors or nurses, face a role conflict between the clinical professional duties to a patient and obligations, express or implied, real or perceived, to the interests of a third party such as an employer, an insurer, the state, or in this context, military command (London et al. 2006). In the context of military medical ethics this is commonly called dual loyalty (or, less commonly, mixed agency). Although other professionals in the military, for instance counsellors or lawyers, might experience similar problems of dual loyalties, it seems that the dual loyalties experienced by military medical personnel are particularly testing.