The class of 2020, wearing their new white coats, attended their first patient clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Image: Steve Lipofsky
As the 200 members of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine class of 2020 were welcomed to the School during Orientation Week, receiving white coats and meeting their first patients, they were reminded of the importance of learning to listen — to both their patients and to their own inner voices.
Fidencio Saldaña, HMS dean for students and assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, asked the students assembled in the Carl Walter Amphitheater on Aug. 2 to close their eyes and picture a moment that symbolized their reasons for becoming doctors.
“Ingrain that picture in your mind's eye and don't ever forget it,” Saldaña said. “In good times and in bad times, you can celebrate that picture and find strength to go on.”
Saldaña told the students that his life as a doctor and educator began when he was a boy growing up in Los Angeles.
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The son of immigrant parents, he said that he developed the passion that would one day lead him to HMS and his calling as a physician when, as a youngster, he was asked to help older members of his family and his community by translating for those who had only limited English, assisting them at the bank, the grocery store or the doctor’s office.
As his career developed, Saldaña said he felt pressure to pursue traditional paths to the top of his profession, but with encouragement from mentors at HMS he learned to listen to his inner voice, finding and following his own definition of success, which includes teaching and mentoring students.
“Within this community that you are joining, there is an unmatched depth and breadth of work being done to meet the challenge of improving human health,” said Acting Dean Barbara J. McNeil, who is also the HMS Ridley Watts Professor of Health Care Policy. “No matter what aspects of this mission call to you most deeply, you will find partners and a home here.”
Celebrating Tradition
McNeil and HSDM Dean Bruce Donoff and other academic leaders celebrated both the traditions and history of the schools and the promise of the incoming students.
Just as students and faculty across HMS, HSDM and the affiliated hospitals work to integrate research, care delivery and education, Donoff noted the importance of integrating dentistry and oral health into overall health care. This, he said, enables physicians to help diagnose oral cancers and allows dentists to play a role addressing the shortage of primary care doctors. In the end, he added, patients benefit from more holistic care.
Other speakers assured the students that they were well prepared to take on leadership in health care delivery and biomedical research in the future. The incoming class of HMS students includes 84 women and 81 men selected from a pool of more than 7,000 applicants. They represent 35 U.S. states and eight foreign countries and come from 65 different undergraduate institutions.
This year’s HSDM class includes 21 women and 14 men from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants. They represent 19 states and 27 different undergraduate institutions.
“If you listen carefully to patients, they can begin to make you see things from a different perspective,” — Alvin Poussaint, HMS faculty associate dean for student affairs.
Sang Park, HSDM associate dean for dental education and associate professor of restorative dentistry and biomaterials sciences joked that it is especially important for students to form trusting friendships with one another as, in many cases, students will be one another’s first patients when they practice basic skills such as oral injections.
Edward Hundert, HMS dean for medical education and the Daniel D. Federman, M.D. Professor in Residence of Global Health and Social Medicine and Medical Education, told the students that given the rapid pace of change in biomedical science and clinical treatments today, their real goal in medical school should be “to learn how to learn medicine” so that they can continue to assimilate new knowledge and keep abreast of current medical advances for the rest of their careers.
The key to staying on course as the world changes, many speakers said, was to keep the needs of patients in mind.
Alvin Poussaint, HMS faculty associate dean for student affairs and professor of psychiatry, reflected on his own training and on the challenge of adapting to changing world views both within the profession of psychiatry and in the wider world.
“If you listen carefully to patients, they can begin to make you see things from a different perspective,” Poussaint said.
Following the speeches, the students adjourned to their academic societies where they donned their new white coats, a symbol of their entrance into the medical profession, and then attended their first patient clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
A formal White Coat ceremony with the students and their families will be held on Aug. 5.
