New Crop of Medical Students Ready to Wear White Coats

CINCINNATI—The University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine welcomed 175 first-year students into the medical field Friday, Aug. 7, during the college’s 20th annual White Coat Ceremony, held at Cincinnati Music Hall.

Each member of the class of 2019 was presented with a white coat symbolizing entry into the medical profession; the UC Alumni Association provides these coats as a gift. The white coat is also a symbol of the patients the students will treat and the compassion, honesty and caring to which the students should always aspire.

Dean William Ball, MD, welcomed first-year students along with their parents, friends and others who attended the ceremony. He also offered some statistics about the incoming class — 60 percent are from Ohio while 40 percent are from around the country.

This year’s class is the first in recent history to admit more women than men with women representing 51 percent of the class. About 13 percent of the incoming class consists of students from underrepresented minority groups and reflects the college’s commitment to diversity in medicine, said Ball.

"You represent a broad range of experiences and perspectives and a high level of diversity that we enthusiastically embrace,” explained Ball. "Your class was selected based in part on a stellar academic record but also based on your demonstrated ability to be insightful, good communicators who show empathy.”

UC President Santa Ono also offered congratulatory remarks and noted students in the class of 2019 will be graduating from medical school during UC’s bicentennial year. "It will mark 200 years of history that began with the founding of the Medical College of Ohio in 1819 —what is now today’s University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.”

"It’s very easy for us to take for granted the existence of our College of Medicine, given its long history and the fact that it is such an engrained part of our university, our region and our nation’s health-care sector,” said Ono.

However, the College, rich in history and tradition, almost didn’t happen.

"Colorful figures, disagreements, and rivalries almost prevented it from being established,” said Ono. "But eventually these were overcome and the college has grown to become one of the nation’s best. You are embarking on studies in a profession that has a history and ethos reaching back more than 2,500 years and the college you have become part of has a long tradition that began with the college’s founder, Daniel Drake.

"Drake held as core values ‘imagination’ and a connection to real-world medical programs and those cores values live on in our entire university to this day, not just in at our Academic Health Center,” explained Ono.

Students also received a keynote address from Philip M. Diller, MD, PhD, Fred Lazarus Jr. Professor and Chair, Department of Family and Community Medicine. Diller is also the recipient of the 2015 Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award presented by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. He joined the College of Medicine faculty in 1991 and has held various positions including co-research director, residency program director and vice chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine before being named department chair in 2010.

As the ceremony drew to an end, the new class continued another annual tradition at the College of Medicine by reading its own unique "Oath of Professionalism,” written by students during their orientation week. Andrew Filak, MD, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the UC College of Medicine, and Mia Mallory, MD, associate dean for diversity and inclusion, presented each student with a white coat.

Sabrina Leach, MD, president of the Medical Alumni Association, presented each student a humanism pin as they departed the stage to wear on their new white coat as a reminder to sustain their own humanistic approach to patient care and inspire and nurture it in their colleagues.