School and Work Release Evaluations

Abstract

Increasingly high levels of absenteeism for minor illnesses and injuries have created serious problems for American schools and industries. Short-term absenteeism also creates serious ethical and professional dilemmas for primary care physicians who routinely perform school and work release evaluations. Through an inductive analysis of three typical cases, these problems are identified. The major ethical issues involved are discussed, including truth-telling, confidentiality, and a confusion of the professional boundaries of medicine, education, and industry. Through a deductive analysis, it is shown that the conventional approaches to school and work release evaluations fail to achieve satisfactory results. To circumvent these problems, three solutions are proposed: primary care physicians can refuse to do such evaluations, inform the patient of the purpose and rules of the encounter, or perform evaluations only in the context of treatment.