FAU’s Medical Students to Receive their First Doctor’s White Coats at Time Honored Ceremony
BOCA RATON, FL (August 10, 2012) – The 64 students who make up the incoming class of 2016 of Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine will receive their first doctor’s white coats at a ceremony today at 4 p.m. to symbolically confirm their commitment to the profession of medicine. During the ceremony, faculty from the College will cloak the students with a white coat—the pre-eminent symbol of physicians for more than 100 years. The ceremony, which is a time honored tradition, will take place in the Barry and Florence Friedberg Lifelong Learning Center at 777 Glades Road on the Boca Raton campus. Members of the inaugural class of the medical school have been paired with students in the incoming class and will serve as mentors to the newly minted medical students. Each student will be pinned with the “Humanism in Medicine” lapel pin by his/her mentor during the ceremony. At the conclusion of the event, the students will recite in unison an “oath” they have collectively written, which will serve as a code of conduct they are committed to following throughout their education and as physicians after medical school.
“The doctor’s white coat is a vivid symbol of the medical profession,” said David J. Bjorkman, M.D., M.S.P.H., dean of the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine. “As our new students put on their white coats for the first time today, they are putting on the mantle of being a physician.”
The event program will include remarks from FAU President Mary Jane Saunders and the keynote address will be presented by Bjorkman and is titled “Honor, Healing and Hope: The Hippocratic Oath.”
The Schmidt College of Medicine’s incoming class comes from all walks of life with unique backgrounds that include a national level figure skater, gymnasts, martial artists, a ballerina, a kick boxer, research scientists, musicians, a competitive tennis player and a vascular sonographer—and they all share the drive and passion to become physicians and help patients. Ranging in age from 21 to 35, the medical students represent most of the major colleges and public universities in Florida and make up 60 percent of the incoming class. Other students in the class attended undergraduate institutions around the country, including Columbia, Boston University, Duke, George Washington, UCLA, William & Mary, University of California-Santa Barbara, Brigham Young University, California State University-Los Angeles, St. Josephs, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, University of Alabama, University of Wisconsin, The Ohio State University and Notre Dame.
Fifty-eight percent of the class is women—higher than the national average of 49 percent. Approximately 13 percent of the class is Hispanic, 11 percent are Asian and 3 percent are African-American. Although 75 percent of the class majored in traditional pre-med subjects, the class is also made up of students who have non-science majors such as Asian studies, philosophy, history and economics. Twelve of the class members have advanced degrees, including one student who is a post-doctoral fellow and holds an M.S. degree and a Ph.D. in pathobiology.
A symbolic event introduced in 1993, the White Coat Ceremony was established after a group of
distinguished physicians, medical educators and community leaders formed the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. The Foundation concluded that the beginning of a student’s journey into medicine is the best time to influence standards of professionalism, humanistic values and behavior. More than 100 medical schools in the United States now hold White Coat Ceremonies. The “Humanism in Medicine” lapel pins are provided by The Arnold P. Gold Foundation.
