345 “Our duty is to patients”: a critical frame analysis of physician’s engagement in media debate on the role of the medical community in implementing migration control policies

OP 9: Health Services 1, B210 (FCSH), September 3, 2025, 15:45 - 16:45 Aim Between 2022 and 2024, extensive media debate took place in Sweden concerning a government initiative seeking to implement the mandatory reporting of undocumented people presenting for care within the public healthcare system. As part of the Boundaries Longitudinal Study, the aim was to examine physicians’ engagement in media debate addressing the call for their involvement in internal border controls. Methods A critical frame analysis was conducted, paying particular attention to the ways in which physicians’ framed their positions in public discourses. Data consisted of media sources, including published text and audio-visual materials. Both individual (public statements made by a physician to the press, and media publications authored by physicians) and collective statements (made by medical unions and NGOs involved in medical humanitarianism providing care to undocumented people) were included. Results We found that physicians engaged with the media in multiple ways, primarily through resistance-framed narratives, including position pieces, op-eds, and blog posts. Collectively, physicians and physicians’ unions engaged through press releases, position pieces, and published public petitions. Throughout, three primary frames were employed: the undue burden that involvement in border control would pose on physicians’ work environment in an already overburdened healthcare system, the duty to treat all patients based on medical need and principles of prioritisation exclusively, and the risk of mandatory reporting leading to ethical stress. In some cases, these frames merged with various human rights arguments, including the right to health, the convention on the rights of the child, and principles of non-discrimination. Conclusion Physicians in Sweden engage in media debate through a sustained approach, both individually and collectively, through three primary frames voicing contestation toward the prospects of their community’s involvement in internal border controls. Moreover, contestation was also framed as a pledge to ignore the duty to report if it were to become law.