How medical school students are choosing their own oaths

While today’s physicians normally don’t swear to Apollo like in the original Hippocratic oath, even more modern versions are falling out of fashion, with some medical schools letting students craft their own vow to “do no harm.”

STAT News found several schools where the traditional oath is being replaced. At the University of Texas’ new Dell Medical School, the inaugural class selected its own version, choosing to modify a 1964 oath written by a former dean of the Tufts University School of Medicine used by around 33 percent of medical schools.

“I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, or a cancerous growth, but a sick human being,” read one part of the oath.

Other oaths reflect values of the particular institution, like at California’s Loma Linda University, where medical students do make a pledge to God while foregoing the original oath’s swearing off of abortion and euthanasia.

Harvard Medical School allows each class of students to craft their oaths both at the white coat ceremony and graduation. The latest edition included parts that STAT’s Melissa Bailey said sounds “like a fiery sermon.”

“We promise to bear witness to historical injustices that continue to unfold for marginalized communities,” the oath reads. “We must have the courage to act when we witness injustice.”

For more on the wide variety of oaths at different medical schools, click on the link below: