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Medical students in classroom The White Coat Ceremony Dr. Carson Schneck with Anatomy students

Student Affairs and Resources

White Coat Ceremony

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

 

Friday, August 10, 2012

10:00 a.m.

 

Temple Performing Arts Center

Broad and Polett Walk

 

PARKING

Liacouras Center Parking Garage

The Liacouras Center Arena is located in North Philadelphia on the corner of Cecil B. Moore and N. Broad Street in North Philadelphia, PA, about a mile and a half north of city hall. The venue has a 1,200--space indoor parking garage attached to the facility (at Cecil B. Moore and North 15th Street), and parking lots located throughout the main campus.  View map.

 

 

 

 

About the White Coat Ceremony

 

The White Coat Ceremony, initiated in 1993 at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons with the support of the Arthur Gold Foundation, has become common practice in US medical schools. The ceremony is a rite of passage for first year medical students, designed to inculcate the values of professionalism, humanism, and compassionate patient care.  It is the official welcome to the medical profession and to the Temple family.

 

In the ceremony, students are "cloaked" in their first white coats in the presence of family members, friends and school faculty. The program includes greetings by medical school deans; explorations of the meaning of professionalism by an array of speakers representing the perspectives of medical school faculty, alumni, the community, patients and ethicists; and taking of an oath based upon the 1948 Declaration of Geneva.

 

For students, it provides a vivid realization that they are, in fact, medical students and future physicians and serves as a rite of passage into the profession of medicine.