SGU School of Medicine August 2020 White Coat Ceremony 1

[Music] welcome to the saint george's university school of medicine virtual white coat ceremony the tradition began in 1993 when the arnold p gold foundation created the white coat ceremony at columbia university's college of physicians and surgeons to promote humanism in medicine with guidance from the gold foundation st george's university school of medicine initiated its own white coat ceremony in 1996 long before many other u.s medical schools in 2003 the gold foundation founded the gold humanism on a society widely known as ghhs an international society dedicated to the promotion of humanism professionalism and ethics in medical practice and education dr gold was an international advocate for humanism in healthcare we are honoured to have hosted dr gold and his wife sandra as keynote speakers for our spring 2005 white coat ceremony sgu's chapter of ghhs is based in the bioethics division of the department of clinical skills and supported by the dean of medicine's office our chapter established the humanitarian student organization hso in 2009 through which basic sciences students promote humanism across the sgu and grenadian communities chapter members are nominated by their peers and inducted during their clinical training when they participate in an ongoing chapter project we now welcome dr glenn jacobs provost of st george's university welcome i am dr glenn jacobs provost at saint george's university and i am very pleased that you could join us at this virtual white coat ceremony i want to start by expressing how proud i am of how you have adapted to distance learning you have been responsive and resilient during these times which will contribute to your personal and professional success throughout your time at saint george's university and thereafter we remain dedicated to supporting you as you start your journey in the field of medicine when it's safe to do so you will meet in person one day but for now focus on how this pledge of commitment to your chosen lifelong profession brings you together as future physicians it is now my pleasure to introduce dr charles or modica chancellor saint george's university greetings my name is charles modica and i'm the founding chancellor of saint george's university this uh white coat ceremony is unique to me because in all the decades that i've been involved with the university we have done these ceremonies in person this should not take away from the significance of the ceremony it's a very important ceremony in your lives it's the beginning of the end of your education hopefully you don't have many more degrees you can uh go for at this point but i want to tell you that in 1976 when the university was founded 45 years ago i was proud to be the first chancellor i was only two years older than the average age of the charter class and at 29 years of age i never had any doubt of the success of our university and we did it because the charter class students like you were dedicated in what they wanted to achieve they wanted to achieve it on their own and whatever help the university gave them to do it they welcomed but they had to have that fire in them and i believe you still do it'll be difficult for you in the world of a pandemic to start to be online to do it in a different way but i can tell you the facilities the university has now which are quite extensive very few of them were there for the charter class so in many ways they did it on their own they had the faculty there in person they worked with each other and you'll be able to do that online as well and they had all the tools that they needed as you do it's significant that the only two remaining people associated with that university 45 years ago that are still here to greet you would be myself and dr dean rao and dean rao has been a very good friend of the university and my own friend certainly for years now and he's gone a long way to see the successes of all of the students that started at st george's he regularly communicates with them we've had the sons and daughters of a lot of our earlier graduates go through the school now and we realize that the significance of saint george's is the fact that you're able to do it with one another with a dedicated faculty and administration that cares about you and your success and i'm so proud that at the ceremonies that we've had since the charter class that we've always had this inspiration with the students in the classes coming in knowing that you can and will succeed you know in the world of medicine especially here in the united states saint george's university has achieved a significant milestone in the past decade we are the largest single provider of physicians to the united states of any school in the world we're proud of that and it means a lot to me to know that the country of grenada has assisted in the education of all of those individuals and being number one in terms of the being a provider is important but the quality of our graduates is second to none and at many white coat ceremonies previously we've had speakers from all over the world and i can't help but think of one now and during the pandemic that a name you'll know and that was dr fauci he was one of our earlier white coach speakers and to have him at our school of medicine a few decades ago meant a lot to us at the time and now when we've gone through this together and we realize the significance he has in the world of medicine we're so proud to know that people like that have been associated with saint george's and we're proud of you for being part of the next generation i'd like to introduce now our newly appointed dean of the school of medicine dr marios lucas and congratulations for your acceptance at st george's university i'm dr marius lucas and i'm the dean of school of medicine the faculty and i in grenada we are looking forward for your arrival to the island in the coming terms let's reflect on few of the principles of the oath you will affirm upon graduation from this institution but also the professionalism commitment during your white coat ceremony at the heart of the oath and professionalism commitment is a result to trick the sick to the best of your ability to preserve patient privacy and to safeguard life it is also called the mind the responsibility to share your wisdom with others recognize that in entering the field of medicine you join a community where the team is of utmost importance to success as compared to individual effort to this end you must strive for excellence in your pursuit of knowledge as you do this white physician codes you pledge a note of professionalism and service while these values are under attack they're necessary requirement in medical practice professionalism is a commitment to integrity altruism competence and ethics in the service of others a physician must constantly balance the needs of his patients and society against the available resources and his own interests we must endeavor to honor the sacred trust and privilege that society places in medical professionals cognizant that the standard is an ideal that we must continuously aim to achieve i welcome you to the noble profession of medicine it is now my pleasure to introduce dr richard yoltz a good friend and our keynote speaker dr rhodes is an educator physician and an administrator during a distinguished career spanning more than 30 years dr rawls became president of saint george's university in grenada on august 28 2015 prior to joining sgu he was the vice chancellor for health affairs and the founding dean of the school of medicine at the university of california riverside in 2010 dr oats joins joined university of california riverside to lead the creation of the new school of medicine the first lcme accredited medical school in california in more than four decades dr ross is a graduate of case western reserve university school of medicine and trained in internal medicine at the mass general hospital in boston he was an infectious disease fellow and one of the nation's first geographic medicine fellows at university hospitals of cleveland where he he also served as medical chief resident and faculty member he served as a full professor of medicine pediatrics molecular cell and developmental biology at brown university he was professor and chairman of medicine at the metro health campus of case western reserve university his role at university of california riverside was preceded by a decade-long extend as professor and chair of medicine at medical college of wisconsin in addition to his academic background dr rose is a tropical disease specialist with extensive experience working in asia and africa he has over 100 peer review articles and book chapters primarily on international health topics he currently serves on world health organizing organization expert panel and was chairman of the board of a large gates foundation project to deform children in sub-saharan africa please join me in welcoming dr richard olds welcome i'm dr richard ohls president of st george's university and it's my pleasure to be your keynote speaker for the white coat ceremony today i'm talking to you from northern vermont and i think all of you are probably scattered all over the world and i look forward to the opportunity when we can all get together in addition to being president of st george's i also teach in both the medical school and the veterinary school and for over 40 years i've trained young physicians like yourselves to be better physicians well let me start with some bad news when you put on that white coat today you're not going to know one bit more of medicine and you're not going to know any more basic science or anything more about how to cure patients of disease but when you put on that white coat you do assume the responsibility to being a thoughtful and caring physician you must take on the mantle of professionalism associated with our profession even if you don't know anything more than you do today when you think about it society imparts tremendous opportunities and privileges to those of us in the medical profession we are allowed to examine the bodies of our patients they tell us the most intimate details about things that they don't share with anyone else and we are often with them in some of their most vulnerable and difficult times in their lives in return for that rare privilege we are expected to always behave in our patients best interest to be thoughtful to be caring to be what you would want as your physician well the white coat ceremony is symbolic of that activity but interestingly the white coat has not always been associated with physicians in the 17th and 1800s physicians wore black frocked coats it really was until the end of the 19th century that physicians became associated with the color white that really came from twin forces pasteur and the understanding of the germ theory of disease led to white for sterility and cleanliness and on the other hand the marriage between modern medical science and the medical profession evolved and if you will the laboratory coat became the physician's white coat so for virtually the entire 20th century white coats were synonymous with physicians but interestingly it was until the 1990s that the white coat ceremony became part of your training done first by columbia university in their medical school now a white coat ceremony is virtually universal in almost all of the healthcare professions but why is that why did people late basically feel that we needed something special to commemorate the beginning of your professional training well perhaps one clue comes from an interesting survey that was done in 1950 of the most admired professions in the united states in that year of 1950 the three most admired professions were doctors clergies and teachers interestingly when that survey was repeated in 2000 the three most admired professions were clergy teachers and nurses physicians were no longer in that top tier now i'll grant you we didn't fall all the way to the lawyers and used car salesmen but we fell substantially in that list the american public in this case no longer held us in the same esteem as we had enjoyed 50 years before and there was concern that that was driven not by our lack of medical knowledge which was considerably greater in 2000 than 1950 but by a deterioration in our professional behavior in our caring and thoughtfulness in the interaction with our patients thus the white coat ceremony to reinforce at the very beginning of your medical training the importance of that aspect of professionalism now interestingly we have an opportunity through this terrible pandemic of covid to re-establish what's important in physicians and that's really driven by two aspects of the covetepine pandemic the first is personal risk especially before physicians were able to be vaccinated all healthcare workers ended up working long hours in in conditions that put them at risk to acquire covid and yes some nurses and physicians died as a result of that commitment the second was an unfortunate aspect of the transmission of this disease in order to protect family and loved ones from acquiring disease themselves patients were often left completely isolated often in environments like intensive care units where the only contact with humans basically were the doctors and nurses that cared for those patients and increasingly we took on that responsibility not just to care for them but to talk to them to hold their hand to be if you will surrogate loved ones and because of that that was a new opportunity for all health care professionals to be appreciated by greater society now there's only a few times in our past history where similar circumstances have occurred probably the first was during the dark ages during the bubonic plague where physicians and other health care professionals risked getting plagued themselves in order to care for the dead and dying and because of the fear that everyone had of acquiring plague from those plague victims they were largely left alone in their time of greatest need during the 19th century with the large tuberculosis so-called white death of the 19th century many physicians actually acquired tuberculosis as part of their care of patients with consumption in my own personal history i am reminded of the early aids epidemic an infectious disease specialist in the 1970s i was often assigned to care for these patients usually young men that were admitted with this strange disease at the time we had no idea what caused the disease we certainly had no treatment and they had a life expectancy usually measured in weeks and months there wasn't much that we could do from a medical standpoint to treat them besides keeping them comfortable and attempting to treat some of their optimistic infections but the one thing i can always remember is i could be there to talk to them to hold their hand and to comfort them at the end well the covet pandemic has given us again that opportunity and we i think as professionals have risen to that occasion now if you doubt that new responsibility and appreciation i ask you to remember where across the world on designated times people came out of quarantine onto their windowsills under their porches and applauded those in the healthcare profession probably the greatest testament to how a society appreciates those of us on the front lines now i'd like to end my story with my talk with a personal story to talk a bit more about the meaning of that white coat many years ago i was the chairman of the department of medicine at the medical college of wisconsin and during that time i did a lot of inpatient attending either at the university hospital or at our affiliated veterans hospital and this story takes place in july of uh that year and july was always the time that i wanted to be in attending because the house staff were brand new and the third year medical students this was their first rotation now i had attended fairly frequently at the va and i got to know a lot of their patients that were currently coming in and out of the hospital and one of them was mr anderson now mr anderson was a retired dairy farmer from northern wisconsin and he had served in the vietnam war now mr anderson had a tough final years a few years of his life uh he his wife had died uh before he had he had been diagnosed with leukemia and had to go through several rounds of very difficult chemotherapy and probably worst of all he suffered a massive stroke that required him to leave his dairy farm and move in with his daughter who lived in the greater milwaukee area he was bed bound and as a result was frequently admitted to the hospital with various opportunistic infections urinary tract infections pneumonias etc and so i got to know mr anderson and his family quite well during my time of attending well in this first week of july mr anderson again came to the va and was admitted to my service since i had known him previously and i assigned a brand new medical student bill to his case now i assigned bill in part because i knew he was from the dairy farming area of northern wisconsin and i thought they might have something in common and in fact it turned out to be the case i would often come by on rounds and a bill would be in there talking to mr anderson about trout fishing and about life on a dairy farm and bill would often ask him about the vietnam war something that he knew very little about well after several days and we got mr anderson over his urinary tract infection he was discharged home but uh true to form he was readmitted several times during that month for other problems and uh bill again took care of him during that time and and uh we tuned him up a bit and he returned home now at the end of the month i rotated off that service and i actually had to go away to a medical conference and when i got back my secretary gave me a phone message from mr anderson's daughter i called her up and she told me that during the time i was gone that mr anderson had passed away and i told her i was sorry that i wasn't able to be there for her and the family at the end but she told me an interesting story she said that her father was a deeply religious man and he had wondered for many months why god had punished him so his wife had died you know he had become very very ill and suffered through that treatment and most disturbing to him was when he had his massive stroke that required him to leave his beloved dairy farm and and be an invalid and live in the big city and he couldn't understand why god did that to him and she told me just a few days before mr anderson passed he talked to her he said you know i finally realized what god's message was for me he wanted me to live for a few more months so i could help bill be a better doctor that is the meaning of that white coat you will learn from your faculty a lot of medical facts how the body works how it breaks down in disease you will learn about how to diagnose difficult uh illnesses and how to treat them what the latest treatment is but if you're open to it you'll learn how to be a better doctor largely from your patients so as you don your white coat today welcome to the noble profession of medicine thank you and god bless we would now like to introduce our white coat recipients the white coat serves as a symbol of your entry to the profession and your commitment to uphold the duties and trust associated with medicine and medical [Music] training [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we now welcome dr elena wade clinical instructor anatomical sciences and assistant dean of students of st george's university to lead our white coat recipients in reciting aloud the professional commitment this commitment was written by a student task force in 1995 and has been recited at each of our school of medicine white coat ceremonies hello i'm dr lina waid and i'll be leading you through your professional commitment so please read along with me i welcome any physicians viewing to join in today is the beginning of my medical education and training as a physician i acknowledge my responsibility to continue the pursuit of knowledge and understanding until that day when i will cease to be a practicing physician i am entering training for a noble profession in which my interest must always be subservient to those who may seek my assistance i must be ever conscious of the value of my fellow health professionals and treat them with respect at all times my classmates at st georges university are now my colleagues and i owe to them the same support and encouragement to achieve their goals as i hoped to receive from them i will work alongside my colleagues and professors with tolerance compassion and honesty i acknowledge my obligation to adhere to the university honor code and to conduct myself with integrity and in an ethical manner at all times henceforth i shall do all within my power to show in myself an example of all that is honorable and good throughout my medical career it is a privilege to have been given the opportunity to become a physician may i be ever conscious of that privilege and never abuse it congratulations to each of you and i look forward to meeting you in the upcoming terms thank you for allowing me to participate as we draw to a close we would like to thank the arnold p gold foundation for the humanism in medicine pins placed on each student's white coat students families faculty staff and administrators thank you for your support and presence at this ceremony we would also like to say a special thank you to all our inspiring speakers including dr g richard olds our keynote speaker whose message was truly inspirational to us all thank you for joining us for this white coat ceremony [Music] you

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Length: 88min 44sec (5324 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021