At institutions like Harvard Medical School, each incoming class is given the opportunity to write their own personal oath, which students recite at the start of their training. Other medical schools have administrators revise the oaths with input from students to better align with contemporary medical practices and ethical considerations. The oaths are often updated to address topics such as health equity, diversity and patient advocacy. Despite these updates, the core principles of the original Hippocratic Oath — benefiting patients, avoiding harm and maintaining confidentiality — remain intact.
Supporters of the changes argue that personalized and modernized oaths encourage students to reflect on their values, professional goals and ethical responsibilities more deeply.
However, critics argue that revising the oath can undermine medical ethics and free speech, while disrupting a long-standing, universal tradition that unites physicians across generations and cultures.
“[The Hippocratic Oath] binds them to physicians around the world and a practice of thousands of years,” Daniel Sulmasy, MD, PhD, a general internist, professor of biomedical ethics and director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., told Medcape. “It’s more than a medical school or a particular class that does not even connect to the class before them. I think it’s a terrible trend. They think they are in pursuit of relevance, but they are missing the connection.”
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