Hippocratic Oath Lives On At Wits Health Sciences
- L.Rautenbach
More than 600 students undertook a modified Hippocratic Oath on Friday the 27th 2017.
The Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest binding documents in history. And its content gives rise to one of the oldest rites of passage for health care professionals. At Wits, this oath is undertaken as part of a solemn and significant event by all second-year health sciences students, along with students entering the Graduate Entry Medical programme and first-year dentistry students, as they begin clinical components of their training.
More than 600 students undertook a modified Hippocratic Oath on Friday the 27th 2017. Surrounded and supported by families and loved ones in a filled to capacity Linde Auditorium in Parktown, the ceremony outlined their professional responsibility as training health professions and asked them to pledge to uphold specific ethical standards. The oath taking ceremony engenders the continuation of the vital principles of the Hippocratic Oath – to treat the sick to the best of one's ability, preserve patient privacy, and pass on the knowledge to the next generation,
Assistant Dean: Teaching and Learning, Professor Lionel Green-Thompson, speaking at this event highlighted to students their how their growing knowledge of the human body and health would become an immense power, and that with such power would come great responsibility. “Your patients will be your greatest teachers. They will encounter you in their deepest vulnerability, offering themselves completely to you. Your learning will be deeply inscribed on their bodies, mind and spirit. I urge you to treat their submission to you with deep reverence.”
The ceremony while a great tradition, helping fellow health sciences students bond over the moment and create university memories, is undertaken as part of an extensive process of internalising the professional character required in the health professions sector.
The students undertake this Modified Hippocratic Oath:
As a student in the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, I do solemnly declare:
That I will not improperly divulge anything I may learn in my capacity as a student of Health Sciences.
That in my relations with patients, colleagues and others I will conduct myself with dignity as becomes a member of an honourable profession. And I further declare that I will be loyal to my University and will endeavour to promote its welfare and maintain its reputation.