The Impact of Medical School Oaths and Other Professional Codes of Ethics: Results of a National Physician Survey

Most U.S. medical students participate in “white-coat” ceremonies in which they recite an oath, often with reference to the Oath of Hippocrates. Reciting such oaths, or endorsing shared ethical standards such as the AMA Code of Ethics, can nurture professionalism by conveying a sense of gravity and belonging to something greater than oneself (1). Yet historic oaths can sound anachronistic to the modern ear, and the oaths sworn in most medical schools modify the original Hippocratic Oath by excluding significant portions and adding language deemed more fitting (2, 3). Revised oaths, while more relevant to contemporary medicine, may suffer from being arbitrary and self-serving (4, 5).