Oath of the Soviet Physician

Enactment and procedure

The text of the Oath of the Soviet Physician was approved by decree No. 1364-VIII of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 26 March 1971, and the same decree approved the regulation on the procedure for taking the oath. The oath was to be taken by Soviet citizens who, after 1 June 1971, graduated from higher medical schools or medical faculties of universities in the USSR and received the title of physician. It was taken standing, after the rector's opening speech and the reading of the order conferring the title of physician; the signed text was kept in the graduate's personal file and the diploma was annotated to record that the oath had been taken.

Content of the oath

The text opens with the formula "Having received the high title of physician and beginning a career in the healing arts, I solemnly swear" and goes on to pledge: to dedicate all knowledge and strength to the care and improvement of human health, to the treatment and prevention of disease, and to work conscientiously wherever the interests of society require; to be always ready to give medical aid, to treat the sick attentively and with care, and to keep medical secrets; to constantly improve medical knowledge and skill and to further medical science and practice; to seek the advice of colleagues when the patient's interests require it and never to refuse them advice or help; and to preserve and develop the noble traditions of medicine, to be guided in all actions by the principles of communist morality, and always to remember the high calling of the Soviet physician and the responsibility before the people and the Soviet state.

The 1971 text differed from the Hippocratic Oath above all in its dedication to preventive medicine, its commitment to the principles of communist morality, and its declaration of responsibility to the people and the Soviet government. The clause absent from the original, requiring the physician to struggle tirelessly for peace and against nuclear war out of awareness of the danger nuclear weapons pose to humanity, was added by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 15 November 1983.

Adoption and replacement

Health Minister Boris Petrovsky supported the introduction of the Oath of a Soviet Physician; it was approved by a special decree of the Supreme Soviet in 1971 and introduced in all medical schools. The oath subordinated private interests to public ones: graduates promised "to work conscientiously at places where public interests demand," and in practice graduates were often obliged to work for three years after their internship in remote rural hospitals.

The oath was replaced in the mid-1990s by the Russian doctor's oath, and on 17 November 1999 a new text of the doctor's oath of Russia took its place.