The Temple Performing Arts Center swelled with family and friends on Friday, August 10, 2024 for the presentation of white coats to the incoming students who are part of the Lewis Katz School of Medicine’s Class of 2028.
“The white coat ceremony is a special tradition,” said Dione J. Cash, MD, MPH, Associate Dean for Student Support and the ceremony’s leader of ceremonies. “Its purpose is to welcome students to the medical profession and to the Lewis Katz School of Medicine family.”
The rite of passage was the culmination of Transition Week at the Katz School, which began with the Class of 2028’s first day on Aug. 5. Gathered together for the first time, Amy J. Goldberg, MD, FACS, the Marjorie Joy Katz Dean of the Katz School of Medicine , shared the school’s new mission and vision statements and then told the students, “The education that you are going to get here at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine is going to be broader, deeper, and better – and put you in a position to enact that change.”
The purpose of Transition Week is to help the Class of 2028 familiarize itself with one another, the institution, and the surrounding community so that “over time, you’ll feel more grounded, stable,” Dr. Goldberg said to the students.
Medical school can also be a foreign experience for the students’ families and close friends. To aid with their transition, the Katz School’s Office of Alumni Relations hosted an orientation session on Aug. 9 as part of its Katz Cares program, which, as Dr. Goldberg told the audience, is meant to “empower you to play an active role in creating and providing support.”
With both the students and their families and friends assembled before her at the white coat ceremony, Dr. Goldberg encouraged the students, their white coats draped across their laps, to proceed with an open mind and heart.
“Be a sponge,” she said. “Absorb everything: the didactics, which are vast and complex, and the patient care, which is far more challenging. With every encounter, you will learn. And learn that there are no limits to learning. You must constantly ask yourself, ‘How can I be a better doctor tomorrow than I am today?’”
The most crucial lesson ahead of them, Dr. Goldberg said, is appreciating there’s more to practicing medicine than deploying the appropriate diagnostic technique, treatment plan, and cutting-edge technology.
“The ‘beating heart of medicine’ is your heart, your soul, your hands,” she said. “While medicine involves the application of science and technology, it does so for the benefit of the patient. Let me repeat that: for the benefit of the patient. Therein lies the art of medicine. And at Temple, that art is the foundation on which everything else is built.”
The ceremony’s keynote speaker, Michele Elaine Hackley Johnson, MD ‘79, FACR, FASER, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, neurosurgery, and surgery and director of interventional neuroradiology at the Yale School of Medicine, recalled her own first days at the Katz School, walking into Kresge Hall in August 1975. While much has changed since then – including the introduction of the white coat ceremony – the humane instruction that accompanied the curriculum at every turn has remained largely the same.
“During our training at Temple, during preclinical and clinical years, we were taught to bring our best in every situation without prejudice, without judgement,” said Dr. Hackley Johnson, the 2024 Page M. and Henry Laughlin Alumna of the Year. “And if we do that, we bring our best efforts in service to our patients, our colleagues, our community, and humanity.”
As the names of the members of the Class of 2028 were announced, the students stepped onstage, white coats in tow, and sometimes with a parent, grandparent, or sibling who was an alum or faculty or staff member of the medical school and its affiliated hospitals, to animated eruptions from all corners of the theater.
Following the recitation of the Oath of Geneva and the class pledge – which class members developed together earlier in the week – Dr. Goldberg surprised the students with a gift, a Temple-branded stethoscope, which was kept in a cherry Temple tote placed under their seats and made possible by the generosity of alumni, faculty, and friends of the school.
“Beyond the white coat, there is one other tool that, beyond all others, represents the great profession you have chosen,” Dr. Goldberg said of the stethoscope. “It is also a symbol, and conduit, for the essential connection between patient and physician. I know that you will use it well.”