title: Physician strikes.
abstract: Throughout medical history, physicians have rarely formed unions and/or carried out strikes. In a profession faced with the turmoil of health reform and increasing pressure to change their practices and lifestyles, will physicians resort to unionization for collective bargaining, and will a strike weapon be used to fight back against the array of corporate and government powers involved in the transformation of the American health-care system? This article examines the question of whether there could be such a thing as an ethical physician strike. Although physicians have not historically used collective bargaining or the strike weapon, the rapidly changing practice environment in the United States might push physicians and other health-care professionals toward unionization. This article considers the ethical questions that would arise if physicians started taking advantage of labor laws, and it lays out criteria for an ethical strike.
authors.affiliation: From the The Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, National Louis University, Skokie. Electronic address: sthompson@nl.edu.
authors.forename: Stephen L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.affiliation: The School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL.
authors.forename: J Warren
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Salmon
mesh_terms: D003098:Collective Bargaining / Q000379:methods*; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006801:Humans; D010820:Physicians / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D013317:Strikes, Employee; D014481:United States