Ukrainian Physicians Reinterpret the Hippocratic Oath: Significance of Remuneration and Class in Bioethics

While health care inequities have received attention in anthropological research, less has been said about health care providers' experiences of disenfranchisement. Yet, inequality affects not only patients but medical professionals as well. This article addresses the moral calculus that physicians face in millennial Ukraine. Working in an under-resourced system, physicians are tasked with what they see as an impossible constitutional promise of delivering universally free and accessible medical care. They look to the Hippocratic Oath to question their class position as underpaid state employees. In so doing, they highlight their vulnerability to the market and political unrest, while at the same time acknowledging the marginalization of their patients. I argue that physicians manage their vulnerability to the market and the state by relying on classed. everyday ethics to evaluate their moral commitments at work.