Dual loyalty (ethics)


 * This article is about ethnics, for dual loyalty in politics, see Dual loyalty

Dual loyalty is a term used in the field of ethics to describe, a situation where a person has loyalty to two separate interests which potentially conflict with each other.

A frequently cited example of the term "dual loyalty" is used in connection with physicians who must balance, on the one hand, the physician's loyalty to a patient (and/or the regulations that govern the physician-patient relationship), and on the other hand, the institution or country for which the physician serves.

For example, a doctor who is asked by a government to assess a prisoner's fitness to withstand torture faces an enormous ethical dillema because of the competing loyalties of the doctor to the state versus the physican's code of ethics and his/her commitment to a patient's human rights.