For 2,500 years, physicians have sworn allegiance to a set of ethical principles set down by the father of medicine, Hippocrates. While renovated and modernized many times, a new update has taken shape — one it’s proponents say more accurately reflects medicine today.

Citing new healthcare pressures in industrialized nations, a union of two American and one European medical groups, has published a new “Charter of Medical Professionalism.” To Hippocrates’ commitment to patient well-being, the charter adds three principles: honoring patient autonomy, the primacy of patient welfare and social justice. Overall, its mission focuses on medical professionalism, seeking to re-establish trust between physician and patient. Thus, in the charter’s 10 commitments, physicians are directed to respect patient confidentiality, improve access to care and eschew conflicts of interest.

The charter, which has been endorsed by the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Internal Medicine and the European Federation of Internal Medicine, was recently published in The Lancet and the Annals of Internal Medicine.

And there is another campaign afoot to encourage the public to get involved in halting the amount of medical errors that have been killing thousands each year.

Ask your surgeon to use a marker to designate the limb to be operated on. Tell someone if you think you are being given the wrong medication. And make sure the doctors and nurses wash their hands. Ask questions, expect answers, says the new “Speak Up” campaign launched in March by JCAHO.

The national hospital accrediting body is trying to alert the public to take control of their own healthcare and speak up if they think errors could occur.

While JCAHO has long warned hospitals about safety issues, this is the first time the Chicago-based organization (along with financial support from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is taking to the streets to alert the public to the 1999 Institute of Medicine study that found that medical errors kills up to 98,000 people a year.

Brochures are circulating to hospitals, doctor’s offices and pharmacies as part of the “Speak Up” campaign. Doctors and nurses also are being encouraged to wear buttons touting the slogan.

This campaign made it to our local paper one day recently, aside other medically related stories stories headlined: “Tissue firm linked to knee-surgery death,” “Shortage of surgeons predicted” and “High cholesterol linked to Alzheimer’s.” Nothing but this urging to Speak Up was good news, at least potentially. As patients, we can make a difference, a big difference. And caregivers need to be even more vigilant. And perhaps a new oath for physicians will fortify the commitment to the patient that is increasingly challenged today by surging societal and corporate pressures.

Mary C. Tierney, Editor
mtierney@mwc.com