Faculty, family and friends filled Ira Allen Chapel on Friday, November 14 as first-year medical students at the University of Vermont slipped on their first white doctors’ coats.

A milestone in the journey of the first-year medical student, this ceremony officially welcomes students to the medical profession and underscores a commitment to professionalism, humanism, and compassionate patient care. This year’s date falls during the Human Structure and Function course – which features considerable time working in teams in the anatomy lab – often considered a medical students’ most powerful teaching experience.

With a projected shortage of 90,000 total physicians by 2020, the country needs more doctors and a recent visit by Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald last month underscored that fact. Fortunately, more students than ever before – a total of 20,343 – enrolled in the nation’s medical schools in 2014, according to new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges, and among them, 116 students in the University of Vermont College of Medicine’s Class of 2018. On Friday, these first-year students took a major step towards fulfilling the nation’s need and their goal of becoming doctors at the White Coat Ceremony.

Below are profiles of several Class of 2018 students:

• “Grinding poverty” was how a University of Rhode Island (URI) article described UVM first-year medical student Tinh Huynh’s life, which was fraught with multiple school changes, academic challenges, gang violence, and the loss of his brother due to a shooting. But a move to Pawtucket, R.I. following high school was the start of a better life for Tinh, who worked hard at community college, then transferred to URI where he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in chemistry. Volunteer experiences at the Rhode Island Free Clinic in Providence and performing patient health outcomes research led to medical school applications and a generous scholarship to attend UVM.
• Growing up among artists and musicians in New York’s Hudson River Valley, Susannah Kricker says medicine wasn't an obvious choice, but human rights and social justice became her passion as an undergraduate at California's Scripps College. During a volunteer experience at a children’s afterschool center in rural Peru, her observations of “the very basic, yet profound, need for health care among the children and families I met in this town” solidified her desire to engage with people through a career in medicine. With several years of basic science studies, hospital volunteering and physician shadowing under her belt, she began that journey at the UVM College of Medicine. “My time at UVM has inspired and challenged me in so many ways,” says Susannah. “The process of building a professional identity is something that will evolve throughout my life and career.”
• Champlain Valley Union High School alumnus and Williston, Vt. native Miles Grunvald excelled in his health science courses as an undergraduate at Elon University and yearned for a dynamic career that offered opportunities to work with others and learn on a constant basis. Choosing medicine as a career was a natural next step, so he applied to the UVM College of Medicine early decision and was accepted. “Our class is already deep into its studies; we can barely think of milestones beyond our next exam,” admits Miles, who says the White Coat Ceremony serves as a reminder that he and his classmates “are firmly on our paths to becoming physicians.”

The keynote address was given by 2014 Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award recipient A. Evan Eyler, M.D., M.P.H., professor of psychiatry and family medicine. Also participating the White Coat Ceremony was College of Medicine Dean Frederick Morin, M.D., and UVM Health Network President and CEO John Brumsted, M.D., along with Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education William Jeffries, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Clinical Education Tania Bertsch, M.D., and Associate Dean for Students Christa Zehle, M.D. In addition to their white coat, each member of the Class of 2018 found a little something extra: a note of encouragement from a College of Medicine alumni in each coat’s pocket.

A portion of the funding for the white coats is provided by the UVM Medical Alumni Association. The Arnold P. Gold Foundation provides the gift of Humanism in Medicine lapel pins to each medical student participating in the White Coat Ceremony. The Area Health Education Centers and UVM Office of Primary Care provide students with a keepsake copy of The Oath, which is read by medical students and physicians at the close of the ceremony.

Background Information on the White Coat Ceremony:

• The White Coat Ceremony is held at different times during the first year at medical schools across the country.
• Physicians dressed in black until the late 19th century, due to the association of black attire as formal. Physicians adopted the white coat as a symbol of purity at the beginning of the 20^th century.
  (Source: Mark Hochberg, M.D., “The Doctor's White Coat--an Historical Perspective,” American Medical Association Journal of Ethic’s Virtual Mentor website, April 2007)
• According to the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, the White Coat Ceremony helps establish a psychological contract for the practice of medicine.

Initiated on August 20, 1993 at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, this annual ceremony or a similar rite now takes place at about 90 percent of schools of medicine and osteopathy in the United States.