Korean Journal of Medical Ethics
The Korean Society for Medical Ethics
Article

의사들의 집단행동에 대한 윤리적 고찰

정유석1, 조현아2, 박석건3, 박재현4
Yoo-seock CHEONG1, Hyeon-a CHO2, Seok-gun PARK3, Jae-hyun PARK4
1단국대학교 의과대학 가S의학파
2청주교육대학교 윤리학과
3단국대학교 의파대학 핵의학파
4성산생명의료윤리연구소
1Department of Family Medicine, Dankook University
2Department of Ethics, Chongju National Education University
3Department of Nuclear Medicine, Dankook University
4Seongsan Center for Biomedical Ethics

ⓒ Copyright 2000 The Korean Society for Medical Ethics. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Nov 30, 2000

ABSTRACT

In August 2000, Korean government implemented a policy to separate the roles of physicians and pharmacists with respect to the prescription and dispensation of medicine. In particular, the policy prohibited physicians from dispensing medicine and prohibited pharmacists from prescribing medicine. Physicians in Korea have been strongly opposed to this policy and have protested its implementation by staging two nation-wide strikes, one immediately prior to the implementation of this policy, and one immediately subsequent to its implementation. These strikes have in turn evoked a hostile response from Korean citizens, who regard the physicians as acting from purely selfish motives. Within this context a debate has been initiated on the ethics of physicians strikes. At the heart of this debate is the following question: Are physicians strikes an ethically acceptable means of protesting government policies?

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the arguments that have been given on both sides of this debate and to show that physicians strikes are justified from a social and professional point of view.

In this paper, we consider physicians strikes from the point of view of social ethics, professional ethics, and the four principles governing biomedical ethics. We argue that while such strikes can not be justified by the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, or patients autonomy, physicians do have social and professional responsibilities to protest government policies that are harmful to society and that physicians, strikes that are carried out with this purpose can be justified by the principle of justice. Since this is the ultimate purpose of the strikes recently carried out by the physicians in Korea, we argue that these strikes are justified from a social and professional point of view. Although the strike is justified according our conditions, physicians should not give up patients lives. During the strikes, physicians never stop providing care in the emergency room, ICU(intensive care unit) and to obstetric patients, and they tried not to delay surgeries of critical cancer patients.

Keywords: 의사파업; 도덕적 판단; 의약분업; 윤리적 관점
Keywords: Physicians’ Strike; Moral Judgement; Prescription-Dispensation Separation; Ethical Consideration