• medical education
• medical students
• oath taking
• Hippocratic oath
• white coat ceremony

I shared Raanan Gillon’s¹ surprise at Robert Veatch’s criticism of the white coat ceremonies,² and I think that the points raised by Veatch were quite adequately countered by Gillon’s response. The provocative points raised by Veatch do stimulate some valuable critical thinking about the process, although I think Veatch was carried away a bit by hyperbole. To label the drama of the ceremony as “ominous” goes a bit far by any criterion.

I should like to describe an oath taking initiation ceremony in use at the Ben Gurion University Faculty of Health Sciences for almost three decades, its history, features, current practice, and conclusions. I believe that Veatch’s specific objections are addressed by our process and merit consideration by other institutions as well.

When the medical school was founded in 1974 the then dean (and university president as well), Professor Moshe Prywes, met with the just entering class several weeks before the onset of the academic year during a summer preliminary orientation period (of several weeks duration). Professor Prywes, an imaginative, charismatic innovator with a flair for public relations and the dramatic, suggested to the entering class that they take the physician’s oath during the first weeks of the academic year, coinciding with their first exposure to patients (the programme provided for one clinical day each week from the very first week of studies—then an unusual curricular innovation). He explained that he wanted the students to regard themselves as already bearing responsibilities and duties, and not just rights. He saw them as “change agents” working to upgrade the medical care and the health of the patients and community, right from the first days of their schooling.

I had just arrived in Israel as a new immigrant to assume the foundation professorship of medicine, coming from …