Attitudes toward the dubious compensation claim

Laws providing for compensation of workmen for occupational injury are a powerful socio-economic force. In settlement of compensation claims the goal, difficult to achieve, is fairness to employee, employer and insurance carrier. Often, medical, legal, economic and social considerations conflict with one another. A "fact" in one field may not be considered so in another. Since medical data and testimony often guide the ultimate decision of a compensation claim, the physician's attitude is a large factor not only immediately and directly in determination of the case at hand but, perhaps more important, in the ultimate direction of the socio-economic forces which spring from the sum of all such determinations. To perpetuate the good in workmen's compensation laws, the next generation of physicians-and of lawyers and business administrators as well, for they, too, are involved-ought to have basic training in the social sciences in order that they may have a broad rather than a segmental view of the problems with which they deal.