Medical schools update Hippocratic Oath to include DEI, social justice

Many U.S. Medical schools are updating their Hippocratic Oaths recited by incoming students to include woke DEI, social-justice elements.

The Hippocratic Oath is an age-old pledge physicians take to, among other things, look out for the best interests of their patients, “do no harm” in diagnosis and treatment, honor patient privacy and respect the rights of patients to make their own decisions about healthcare.

However, an increasing number of medical schools are adding a woke-style social-justice element to the oath that incoming students are required to recite as they commence their medical studies.

As reported by Do No Harm, an organization of physicians and medical professionals “focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice,” recent incoming students at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine were compelled to recite an updated oath that includes a commitment to the following diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and social justice tenets: 

• “I will work actively to identify and mitigate my own biases so as to treat all patients and coworkers with humility and dignity.” 
• “I will strive to promote health equity.” 
• “I will actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination, and racism.” 

Do No Harm reports UConn’s medical school faculty began considering an update to its Hippocratic Oath nearly five years ago, when Assistant Professor of Medicine Clara Weinstock proposed the change to the Department of Internal Medicine’s Diversity Committee. 

“The Diversity Committee endorsed the proposal, and in 2021, both the dean of the UConn School of Medicine and the associate dean for medical student affairs approved the drafting of a proposal,” notes Do No Harm. 

The organization’s report adds that, according to internal UConn communications, “Dr. Weinstock then created a working group to draft the proposal, which included student and faculty representatives from the following UConn ‘diversity’ and ‘ethics-related’ interest groups: the ‘Student National Medical Association, Latin@ Medical Student Association, South Asian Medical/Dental Association, Disabilities Interest Group, Reach Out [LGBTQAI+], Gold Humanism Society, as well as the Director of Immigrant Health and members of the Internal Medicine Diversity Committee.’” 

In its report, Do No Harm argues the proposal and subsequent update to the UConn School of Medicine’s Hippocratic Oath “makes explicit the view that physicians should be political activists working to advance ‘social justice’ and ‘antiracism.’” 

UConn is not the only school to force medical students to become agents of supposed social justice and DEI. 

During the height of the COVID 19 crisis in 2020, students at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine took it upon themselves to write their own Hippocratic Oath to address supposed issues of inequity in healthcare. National Public Radio reported at the time that incoming Pitt medical students “didn’t want to tiptoe around” issues such as race when they penned their customized version of the oath. 

“As the entering class of 2020, 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,” began the updated pledge written by the incoming Pitt medical students who graduated in 2024. 

The new oath went on to highlight “the fundamental failings of our health care and political systems in serving vulnerable communities. This oath is the first step in our enduring commitment to repairing the injustices against those historically ignored and abused in medicine: Black patients, Indigenous patients, Patients of Color, and all marginalized populations who have received substandard care as a result of their identity and limited resources.” 

The new medical students went on to “pledge as a physician and lifelong student of medicine” to, among other things, “be an ally to those of low socioeconomic status, the BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] community, the LGBTQIA+ community, womxn/women, differently-abled individuals and other underserved groups in order to dismantle the systemic racism and prejudice that medical professionals and society have perpetuated.” 

One of the medical students involved in revising Pitt’s oath, Sean Sweat, seemed especially energized by the effort to embed a social activism element into the pledge. 

Sweat insisted to NPR the COVID-19 pandemic had “wreaked havoc on minority populations. 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.” 

In similar fashion, two years later in 2022, incoming students at the University of Minnesota Medical School recited an oath during their white coat induction ceremony “that included references to anti-racism, climate advocacy, commitment toward indigenous ways of healing, and collaboration with political and social systems,” reports Campus Reform. 

Insisting the University of Minnesota Medical School is located on land claimed by the Dakota people, a Midwest Indian nation, the oath begins with the recognition that “many Indigenous people from throughout the state, including Dakota and Ojibwe … call the Twin Cities home; we also recognize this acknowledgment is not enough.” 

Recognizing the “inequities built by past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism, and all forms of oppression,” the Minnesota medical students committed to “promoting a culture of anti-racism, listening, and amplifying voices for positive change.” 

Additionally, they pledged to “honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine.” And acknowledging that “health is intimately connected to our environment,” the students committed to “healing our planet and communities.” 

Responding to the updated oath at the University of Minnesota Medical School, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a public advocacy group that works to “defend the individual rights of all Americans to think and live freely,” noted “student-updated ethics oaths are trending at medical schools nationwide,” and that such oaths often “go beyond the traditional promises like ‘do no harm.’” 

FIRE cited “similar student-authored oaths” that have been adopted at such prominent medical schools as “Harvard, Columbia, WashU, Pitt Med, and the Icahn School of Medicine.” 

“More than 10% of the campus-related cases in which FIRE intervenes now concern requirements that students and faculty demonstrate their DEI commitments or contributions, or personally make land acknowledgements,” the organization noted. 

And “while universities, students, and faculty are free to encourage or promote DEI-type values, forcing others to say they believe in these concepts is not only contrary to many universities’ legal obligations – but violates their moral obligations, too. … Medical students possibly being made to read verbatim from ideological pledges if they wish to become physicians would be a new low.”