Each time the sleeves of a crisp, new white coat slipped onto one arm and then the other, the cloth settling on proud shoulders, another member of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine class of 2028 marked a watershed moment in their life.
When asked how it felt to put on the white coat, Eliot Behr, an MD student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, said, “It means taking on a big responsibility after working really hard and finally having the opportunity to apply it to society and do something good.”
The 200 new medical and dental students began their training with a ceremony held under a tent on the HMS Quad on Aug. 5, where they received the white coats that symbolize their entry into the profession.
Family, friends, faculty, advisors, and staff joined them to celebrate their achievements and wish them well as they settled into their new surroundings in Boston.
The White Coat Ceremony helped kick off their first week, which included a full schedule of classes and activities introducing them to their faculty, advisors, classmates, local neighborhoods, and profession.
During the students’ first session, HMS Dean for Medical Education Bernard Chang said that he and his fellow deans were not only welcoming them to their first day of medical school but welcoming them home.
Home, Chang told the students, is far more than a place where they will reside during their training. They will find that it is a place where they will be cared for.
“Home is also a place of mutual respect,” said Chang, including mutual respect for peers, faculty, clinical care or lab teams, and patients.
Throughout the week, the students met their first patients as well as members of surrounding Boston communities.
Faculty mentored them on developing essential skills such as cultural humility and digital professionalism.
HMS Dean for Students Fidencio Saldaña and faculty advisors emphasized the resources available to support not only students’ professional success but also their overall well-being.
“You would not have gotten here to HMS and HSDM by yourself,” Chang said. “And you are not expected to get through medical and dental school by yourselves either.”
To close the White Coat Ceremony, Chang had one more salutation for the first-year class.
“Welcome to the profession,” he said.
White Coat Ceremony
