first do no harm

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the ethical principle, expressed in the Latin maxim primum non nocere, that a healthcare provider's first obligation is to avoid causing harm to the patient, implying that when in doubt about whether an intervention will help, the clinician should refrain from acting; though often attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, the precise phrase does not appear there and is of later origin, associated with the nineteenth-century physician Thomas Inman; the principle is foundational to medical ethics, reminding practitioners that interventions carry risks as well as potential benefits and that the duty to help does not override the duty to avoid harm; it is invoked in debates about over-treatment, aggressive end-of-life interventions, and the risks of new therapies whose safety profiles are incompletely known