The Second Year Oath Ceremony

At the Second Year Oath Ceremony, T.H. Chan School of Medicine students pause between the stress of completing finals and preparing for the boards and publicly pledge to honor the human side of medicine in the next stage of their educational journey.

The ceremony is student-driven on many levels. The oath itself, while formally written by a committee of six students, includes input from all 125 members of the class, who spend time in the Doctoring and Clinical Skills class discussing the meaning and significance of oaths in general. The most famous of these in the medical world are the Hippocratic Oath and the Oath of Maimonides, the latter of which is recited at the UMass Chan graduation ceremony.