“Be the kind of physician that you would want to have if you were sick.” With these words, Dr. Arnold P. Gold welcomed the incoming class of medical students at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons last month. As thrilled parents looked on, 168 young men and women sat expectantly in the school’s auditorium, their white coats folded over their arms, each waiting to be called to the front of the room and “cloaked” by a senior physician.
This marked the 18th annual White Coat Ceremony at Columbia. Dr. Gold, a white-haired and avuncular pediatric neurologist, popularized the practice years ago because, he said, “medical students were becoming enamored of technology and were losing the important aspects of human relationships with patients.” Columbia’s chaplain referred to the coats as “cloaks of compassion.”
I asked to observe the “cloaking” ceremony at Columbia because my generation did not have such a tradition in the early 1980s. As I recall, a secretary in the dean’s office instructed us, most unceremoniously, to go to the hospital laundry and pick out a coat in our size. . . .
This article is available in full from the Wall Street Journal.
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