Abstract

There are many ethical dilemmas that are unique to sports medicine because of the unusual clinical environment of caring for players within the context of a team whose primary objective is to win. Many of these ethical issues arise because the traditional relationship between doctor and patient is distorted or absent. The emergence of a doctor–patient–team triad has created a scenario in which the team’s priority can conflict with or even replace the doctor’s primary obligation to player well-being. As a result, the customary ethical norms that provide guidelines for most forms of clinical practice, such as patient autonomy and confidentiality, are not easily translated in the field of sports medicine. Sports doctors are frequently under intense pressure, whether implicit or explicit, from management, coaches, trainers and agents, to improve performance of the athlete in the short term rather than considering the long-term sequelae of such decisions. A myriad of ethical dilemmas are encountered, and for many of these dilemmas there are no right answers. In this article, a number of ethical principles and how they relate to sports medicine are discussed. To conclude, a list of guidelines has been drawn up to offer some support to doctors facing an ethical quandary, the most important of which is ‘do not abdicate your responsibility to the individual player.’ ‘I am in blood Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning would be as tedious as to go o’er’ —Macbeth: Act III, Scene IV, William Shakespeare