DoktorClub Care
Code of Ethics
Primum non nocere
What every physician on this platform commits to — and the two ideas behind it: a Hippocratic principle older than the Latin phrase that carries it, and a land where medicine was practised long before it had a name.
Reviewed 3 September 2026 · Medical editor: Dr. Hamza Gemici, DoktorClub Medical Director
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The DoktorClub Care Code of Ethics
Ten commitments. They follow the WMA Declaration of Geneva (the modern Physician’s Pledge, 2017 revision) and the Turkish Medical Association’s Rules of Medical Professional Ethics (1998), and add the obligations specific to a platform that introduces international patients to physicians.
First, do no harm
Every recommendation weighs benefit against harm. If the honest answer is “no procedure”, that is the answer given.
Evidence, not fashion
Physicians practise evidence-based medicine and say so when evidence is weak, contested or absent. No treatment is presented as proven when it is experimental.
Informed consent, in your language
Benefits, risks, alternatives and the option of doing nothing are explained before any decision — in a language the patient actually understands.
No guaranteed outcomes
No physician on this platform promises a result, a look, or a recovery time. Anyone who does is removed.
No hidden incentives
Physicians are listed for their qualifications, not for a fee. DoktorClub takes no commission on treatment, and no physician pays to rank higher.
Honest scope
The platform states plainly what it has reviewed (specialty and city) and what it has not (identity, licence status, clinical quality, pricing). Unverified stays labelled unverified.
Your data is not the product
The assistant refuses health details by design; nothing you type is used to train models; records are minimised, encrypted and time-limited under KVKK and GDPR.
Equal treatment
Care is offered without regard to nationality, faith, gender, language or ability to pay a premium. International patients receive the same standard as local ones.
Continuity and accountability
A physician who begins your care remains reachable for follow-up, and every profile has a correction path. Complaints are logged and answered.
Respect for colleagues and for the profession
No physician disparages another to win a patient. Disagreement is expressed as a second opinion, with reasons.
A physician who breaches this code loses the DoktorClub review marker. Patients, colleagues and clinics can report a breach through the correction path on any profile.
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Primum non nocere — “first, do no harm”
The idea is Hippocratic; the Latin is not. The Hippocratic Oath (c. 400 BC) says “I will keep them from harm and injustice”; the closest source of the maxim is Hippocrates’ Epidemics I: “to help, or at least to do no harm.” The Latin phrase primum non nocere is a 19th-century coinage — its earliest documented use is by the English physician Thomas Inman in 1860, who mistakenly credited it to Thomas Sydenham.
Why it matters more, not less, in 2026: modern medicine can do more than ever, which means it can also harm more than ever. A platform that introduces patients to physicians across borders, languages and price differences is exactly where the temptation to oversell is strongest. So the principle is built into the product, not just quoted on it: the assistant will not process symptoms, will not quote prices, will not promise availability, and will tell you when no listed physician covers what you need.
For the physicians here, “first, do no harm” is read the way Hippocrates wrote it — as a ranking. Helping comes second to not harming. That is the trust factor.
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Why Anatolia is a cradle of medicine
The land the physicians on this platform practise in has one of the longest continuous medical records on Earth — from Neolithic skull surgery to the Ottoman hospitals that treated the mind with music. These are the documented milestones; each is sourced below.
c. 8,000 BC
Aşıklı Höyük, Aksaray
A young woman’s skull bears a drilled trepanation with bone remodelling — she survived the operation. One of the earliest known cranial surgeries anywhere; Çayönü (Diyarbakır) holds a second Neolithic case.
14th–13th c. BC
Hattusa, the Hittite capital
Cuneiform tablets preserve Hittite medical prescriptions and healing rituals. King Hattusili III wrote to Babylon and to Ramesses II of Egypt asking for physicians; Egypt sent doctors and medicines to Hatti. Mursili II’s Plague Prayers are among the earliest royal texts about an epidemic.
5th–4th c. BC
Knidos, Datça peninsula
A medical school that rivalled Kos — the island facing this coast where Hippocrates was born. Knidian physicians focused on classifying disease; the Koan school on the patient. Modern medicine descends from both.
c. 335–280 BC
Chalcedon (Kadıköy, Istanbul)
Herophilus, born here, performed the first systematic human dissections and is called the father of anatomy.
1st c. AD
Anazarbus, Cilicia
Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica catalogued some 600 plants and remained the standard pharmacological text for roughly 1,500 years.
1st–2nd c. AD
Ephesus and Cappadocia
Soranus of Ephesus set the doctrine of gynaecology and obstetrics for over a millennium; Rufus of Ephesus wrote the first treatise on taking a patient’s history; Aretaeus of Cappadocia gave the first detailed clinical description of diabetes and fixed its name.
129 AD
Pergamon (Bergama)
Galen was born here and trained at the Asklepion of Pergamon, one of the great healing sanctuaries of antiquity. His anatomy and physiology governed European and Islamic medicine for 1,400 years.
1206
Kayseri
The Gevher Nesibe Darüşşifa — hospital and medical madrasa — among the first purpose-built hospital–medical school complexes in Anatolia; today a museum of medical history.
1228
Divriği, Sivas
The Great Mosque and Hospital, a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a two-storey darüşşifa built by Turan Melek beside the mosque.
1465
Amasya
Şerefeddin Sabuncuoğlu, surgeon at the Amasya Darüşşifa, wrote Cerrahiyyetü’l-Haniyye in Turkish — the first surgical atlas in the Islamic world to illustrate the operations themselves, surgeon and patient.
1488
Edirne
The Bayezid II Darüşşifa treated patients with mental illness using music, the sound of water and scent — described by Evliya Çelebi; today a Council of Europe prize-winning health museum.
14 March 1827
Istanbul
Tıphane-i Amire, the first modern medical school of the Ottoman state, ancestor of Istanbul University’s medical faculties. 14 March has been Turkish Medicine Day since 1919.
None of this makes a physician good; only their own conduct does. But it explains the standard they are held to here: in this land, doing medicine carefully has been the expectation for ten thousand years.
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Sources
Fact-checked 3 September 2026. Claims are deliberately worded to the strength of the evidence.
- WMA Declaration of Geneva (2017)
- TTB Hekimlik Meslek Etiği Kuralları (1998)
- Smith CM. Origin and uses of primum non nocere. J Clin Pharmacol 2005
- Hippocratic Oath — Britannica
- Trepanation in Anatolia from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages (Erdal & Erdal 2010; Turkish Neurosurgical Society)
- Hattusa: letter of Hattusili III on Babylonian physicians — Livius
- Medical relations between Egypt and Hatti — overview
- Mursili II Plague Prayers — University of Texas (LRC)
- Knidos and Kos medical schools — Child’s Nerv Syst 2010
- Herophilus — Britannica
- Pedanius Dioscorides — Britannica
- Soranus of Ephesus — Britannica
- Rufus of Ephesus — Encyclopedia.com
- Aretaeus of Cappadocia — Britannica
- Galen — Britannica
- Gevher Nesibe Darüşşifa — Balkan Medical Journal
- Divriği Great Mosque and Hospital — UNESCO
- Amasya Darüşşifası — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi
- Sabuncuoğlu, Cerrahiyyetü’l-Haniyye — PubMed
- Edirne Bayezid II Darüşşifa — PMC
- Tıphane-i Amire (1827) — Istanbul University history