Medical Oaths and Their Educational Impact

Medical Science Educator, 2019

Oaths recited in medical schools provide valuable insight into the medical profession's evolving core of ethical commitments. This study presents a brief overview of medical oaths, and how they came to attain their current prominence. The authors examine medical oaths used in twentieth-century North America (the USA and Canada) through a critical review of six studies on oath administration and content that were undertaken between 1928 and 2004. While oath-taking became almost universally prevalent in twentieth-century North American medical schools, the ethical content of oaths grew increasingly heterogeneous. The findings challenge assumptions about the content of medical oaths. They also create dynamic markers for gauging the variability in the current ethical milieus of medical education, providing a basis for evaluating future direction.

2019

Background Upon graduation physicians in Bulgaria are required by law to take the Hippocratic Oath and its’ different adapted variants are used in the medical schools. The goal of this survey was to investigate medical students’ in 4th, 5th and 6th year of their undergraduate training perception and preferences about the two versions: the adapted Hippocratic Oath currently used in one medical school (Version-1) and the newly-revised Declaration of Geneva “The Physician’s Pledge”, 2017 (Version-2). Methods An empirical survey was carried out, using direct individual self-administered questionnaire from February to April 2018. Students’ lists of total 239 medical students provided by the institution’s authority were used. 183 students responded (total response rate of 76.57%). Methods of descriptive and analytical statistics were used based on the nature of the data: relative frequency distributions, Pearson Chi-Square nonparametric test for hypothesis assessment – statistical signifi...

Medical Education, 2013

Taking a formal oath in public carries a symbolic significance for both the individual doctor and the wider public

Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 1999

While there has been much discussion about the role of oaths in medical ethics, this discussion has previously centered on the content of various oaths. Little conceptual work has been done to clarify what an oath is, or to show how an oath differs from a promise or a code of ethics, or to explore what general role oath-taking by physicians might play in medical ethics. Oaths, like promises, are performative utterances. But oaths are generally characterized by their greater moral weight compared with promises, their public character, their validation by transcendent appeal, the involvement of the personhood of the swearer, the prescription of consequences for failure to uphold their contents, the generality of the scope of their contents, the prolonged time frame of the commitment, the fact that their moral force remains binding in spite of failures on the part of those to whom the swearer makes the commitment, and the fact that interpersonal fidelity is the moral hallmark of the co...

Recent accreditation standards have changed for all US and Canadian medical schools and residency programs. Newly mandated knowledge, skills, behavior, and attitudes required of the learner to become a medical professional are permeated with professionalism and associated curricular themes. The art of medicine now emphasizes humanistic skills, ethical precepts, and principle-based values. To this end, this chapter calls for enhanced learner collaboration with educators, as well as a required longitudinal ethics curriculum and medical apprenticeship for all phases of medical education. These efforts can thereby result in greater moral reflection on professionalism and its successful assimilation into clinical practice.

2010

Hippocratic Oath indicates a prevailing ethos rather than a professional approach, and it is still regarded as the cornerstone and foundation of the medical profession. Medicine in Ancient Greece was strongly influenced by the values of classical philosophy as introduced by its main representatives: Plato and Aristotle. Hippocrates himself has been recognized not only as a pioneering physician, but also as an outstanding philosopher. In his writings, he claimed that ''the physician must insert wisdom in medicine'' and denounced the technocratic aspect of the medical profession. The Hippocratic Oath constitutes a synopsis of the moral code of Ancient Greek medicine and contributes to the stabilization of the tri-part relationship among the physician, the patient, and the illness, as described by Hippocrates. The harmony of this interactive triangle has been deranged by several factors, such as technological evolution, public media, and cost-effective modalities with multiple consequences. In these terms, the reevaluation of the Hippocratic Oath and its time-enduring messages seems essential to reinstate the relationship between the physician and the patient under a new philosophico-medical prism.

2006

Recent accreditation standards have changed for all US and Canadian medical schools and residency programs. Newly mandated knowledge, skills, behavior, and attitudes required of the learner to become a medical professional are permeated with professionalism and associated curricular themes. The art of medicine now emphasizes humanistic skills, ethical precepts, and principle-based values. To this end, this chapter calls for enhanced learner collaboration with educators, as well as a required longitudinal ethics curriculum and medical apprenticeship for all phases of medical education. These efforts can thereby result in greater moral reflection on professionalism and its successful assimilation into clinical practice.

European Spine Journal, 2018

This is the second part of a paper on the relevance and significance of the Hippocratic Oath to modern medical ethical and moral values with the aim at answering questions on controversial issues related to the Oath. Part I argued that the general attributes and ethical values of the Oath are relevant to the modern world. Part II attempts to elucidate the interpretation of the specific injunctions of the Oath from today's perspective in relation to ethical values concerning the duties of physicians to patients and society. The objective is to prove that the Oath has established the general context of medical ethics of the physicianpatient relationship, which reflects longlasting moral values that still define the medical profession. The Oath has exemplified the fundamental modern ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and confidentiality. Its foremost message focuses on patients' best interests and not on the prohibition of surgery, euthanasia or abortion, as is generally believed. Furthermore, the Oath as a code of professional identity has had a powerful impact on modem judicial opinions regarding medical ethics. In a lot of ways it is as relevant of the values of contemporary medicine as it was for ancient medicine.