Background: Australian Military medics, who are both professional soldiers and qualified nurses, can face situations where their training and moral ethos conflict in the performance of duty. Their role has intrinsic duality. They are both a soldier, thus a member of a military organisation, as well as well as a healer, a nurse with a corresponding duty of care. Both roles have ethical, legal and professional responsibilities, codes of conduct and moral codes. They are therefore guided by nursing codes of ethics and professional conduct which provides a framework for patient care and professional decision making. These may rival military objectives and orders of battle, leading to a disaccord for the person involved and result in a moral dilemma. Both also are roles which have strong cultural images and distinct expectations from individuals and those around them. This can lead to moral dilemmas, moral injury and long-term psychological illness. In the 2024 Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide in Australia, moral injury was cited as a relatively new, but not widely acknowledged, risk factor that may lead to suicide.
In the context of defence, moral injury can be described as being experienced by a person who participates in, or witnesses, actions that go against their moral code or moral beliefs. Exposure to traumatising events on operational deployments, both war-like and non-combat, leads to psychological distress. Moral distress triggers emotions of shame and guilt and is not well understood or documented. It has been described as a ‘wounding of the soul, of doing something or witnessing something really wrong’. It manifests as anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts and intent. The risk of such harmful outcomes is increased and exacerbated through the role duality of the Australian Army medic.

Research Design: The research presented is a study into the role duality of the Australian Army medic in warzones. It focuses on interviews from twelve Australian Army medics who have deployed overseas in recent conflicts with the research question: How does the intrinsic duality and resultant ethical conflicts of the role of the medic impact the individual performing this specialised role?