The Hippocratic oath for doctors was changed in 2020
Oct 7, 2021 1:33:06 GMT -5
Post by ShofarSoGood on Oct 7, 2021 1:33:06 GMT -5
The Hippocratic oath for doctors was changed in 2020
The new oath asks physicians to eliminate their personal biases, combat disinformation to improve health literacy and be an ally to minorities and other underserved groups in society.
Remember when doctors used to pledge to do no harm? Now they pledge to help you think correctly and help you be less racist.
A New Hippocratic Oath Asks Doctors To Fight Racial Injustice And Misinformation
November 4, 2020
11:14 AM ET
SARAH BODEN
FROM
90.5 WESA
Health care professionals gather outside Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis in June to demonstrate in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Jeff Roberson/AP
First-year medical student Sean Sweat "didn't want to tiptoe around" issues of race when she sat down with 11 of her classmates to write a new version of the medical profession's venerable Hippocratic oath.
"We start our medical journey amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and a national civil rights movement reinvigorated by the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery," begins the alternate version of the oath, rewritten for the class of 2024 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
It continues: "We honor the 700,000-plus lives lost to COVID-19, despite the sacrifices of health care workers."
Sweat and the other incoming first-year medical students recited this newly penned pledge, along with a traditional version of the Hippocratic oath, as part of orientation activities during their first week of medical school this fall.
First-year medical students at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine work together on Zoom to craft a new version of the Hippocratic oath.
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
The earliest known version of the Hippocratic oath dates back to the fifth century B.C. Many iterations exist, and in many U.S. medical schools it has become customary for incoming medical students to write and even recite their own versions; many of the variants include language that prohibits discrimination or bias in the practice of medicine.
What's distinctive about the University of Pittsburgh version is that it specifically names people who have died recently at the hands of police and thereby addresses events that are still unfolding.
"Our oath can be both timely and timeless," Sweat says.
Increasingly, medical professionals are joining protests for racial justice and acknowledging racism's impact on public health. For example, Black residents of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is the county seat, have been disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus, as have Blacks in other parts of the United States. Though 13% of Allegheny County is Black, Black residents make up nearly 19% of cases and 30% of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
"This pandemic has wreaked havoc on minority populations," Sweat says. "It has revealed the many gaps within the medical field. ... A lot of those gaps that this pandemic has revealed, those are things we need to go after to fix."
Bioethicist Laura Guidry-Grimes agrees this year has been a "paradigm-shifting time" that has brought a "reckoning" for medicine; she says she likes that the University of Pittsburgh version of the Hippocratic oath discusses COVID-19.
"[It acknowledges] that we have been challenged and learned the hard way ... that what we've been doing is not enough," says Guidry-Grimes, an assistant professor in the department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Arkansas.
The new oath asks physicians to eliminate their personal biases, combat disinformation to improve health literacy and be an ally to minorities and other underserved groups in society.
Continued at link
The new oath asks physicians to eliminate their personal biases, combat disinformation to improve health literacy and be an ally to minorities and other underserved groups in society.
Remember when doctors used to pledge to do no harm? Now they pledge to help you think correctly and help you be less racist.
A New Hippocratic Oath Asks Doctors To Fight Racial Injustice And Misinformation
November 4, 2020
11:14 AM ET
SARAH BODEN
FROM
90.5 WESA
Health care professionals gather outside Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis in June to demonstrate in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Jeff Roberson/AP
First-year medical student Sean Sweat "didn't want to tiptoe around" issues of race when she sat down with 11 of her classmates to write a new version of the medical profession's venerable Hippocratic oath.
"We start our medical journey amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and a national civil rights movement reinvigorated by the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery," begins the alternate version of the oath, rewritten for the class of 2024 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
It continues: "We honor the 700,000-plus lives lost to COVID-19, despite the sacrifices of health care workers."
Sweat and the other incoming first-year medical students recited this newly penned pledge, along with a traditional version of the Hippocratic oath, as part of orientation activities during their first week of medical school this fall.
First-year medical students at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine work together on Zoom to craft a new version of the Hippocratic oath.
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
The earliest known version of the Hippocratic oath dates back to the fifth century B.C. Many iterations exist, and in many U.S. medical schools it has become customary for incoming medical students to write and even recite their own versions; many of the variants include language that prohibits discrimination or bias in the practice of medicine.
What's distinctive about the University of Pittsburgh version is that it specifically names people who have died recently at the hands of police and thereby addresses events that are still unfolding.
"Our oath can be both timely and timeless," Sweat says.
Increasingly, medical professionals are joining protests for racial justice and acknowledging racism's impact on public health. For example, Black residents of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is the county seat, have been disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus, as have Blacks in other parts of the United States. Though 13% of Allegheny County is Black, Black residents make up nearly 19% of cases and 30% of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
"This pandemic has wreaked havoc on minority populations," Sweat says. "It has revealed the many gaps within the medical field. ... A lot of those gaps that this pandemic has revealed, those are things we need to go after to fix."
Bioethicist Laura Guidry-Grimes agrees this year has been a "paradigm-shifting time" that has brought a "reckoning" for medicine; she says she likes that the University of Pittsburgh version of the Hippocratic oath discusses COVID-19.
"[It acknowledges] that we have been challenged and learned the hard way ... that what we've been doing is not enough," says Guidry-Grimes, an assistant professor in the department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Arkansas.
The new oath asks physicians to eliminate their personal biases, combat disinformation to improve health literacy and be an ally to minorities and other underserved groups in society.
Continued at link
