Ethical dilemmas and professional roles in occupational medicine

Occupational medicine presents ethical dilemmas between worker health and corporate goals, for both physicians and managers. Physicians in occupational practice recognize conflict between 'moralist' and 'utilitarian' ethical positions. This paper analyzes the relation of professional roles to ethical interpretations by occupational physicians, based on their own and medical ethicists' formulations of dilemmas. Physicians' conflicting responsibilities to workers as patients and to corporate practices and policy are reviewed in the context of occupational risk and the critical anthropology of health.