Declarations for new doctors are unnecessary

doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7341.851

BMJ 2002;324:851 ( 6 April )

Letters

Declarations for new doctors are unnecessary

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ The declaration for new doctors devised by Sritharan et al and shown in their editorial is nonsense.¹ It is meaninglesswaffle and unlikely to benefit anyone, and the statement thata professor of medical ethics was involved engenders littleconfidence.

The stated ideals of the declaration, like those of Christianity, are impossible to attain. The first hurdle comes in thefirst line: "I will to the best of my ability serve humanity."When in imminent danger of falling from a rockface it is indeedpossible for me to hang on to the best of my ability, but it can'tbe done for very long. Do these authors have no sense of theridiculous?

Christians counsel against letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, in the sense of making the best use of Christianprinciples, which are already well known. This is no excuse forthe deliberate . . . [Full text of this article]

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Medical oaths and declarations: Kaji Sritharan, Georgina Russell, Zoe Fritz, Davina Wong, Matthew Rollin, Jake Dunning, Philip Morgan, and Catherine Sheehan
BMJ 2001 323: 1440-1441. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]