The Orpheum buzzed like opening night.
Which it was. The UNMC College of Medicine’s White Coat Ceremony, this year held Aug. 25 at Omaha’s venerable downtown theater, officially marks the launch of medical school, and a career dedicated to patient care, for each respective incoming class.
“It’s the beginning,” said Wendy Grant, MD, Wong Distinguished Professor in Surgery, and — importantly in this setting — associate dean of student affairs.
Everything is different from this moment on.
“It’s an important rite of passage,” Dr. Grant said, “that they have earned.”
See a photo album from the event.
Being presented with a white coat marks not just the commencement of a new journey but also the importance of compassionate patient care. The coat comes with a responsibility, and the new students, after donning them, took an oath. A solemn promise.
“The white coat that you are receiving,” Bradley Britigan, MD, dean of the UNMC College of Medicine, told the assembled students, symbolizes “respect, competency, service and integrity, and should not be donned casually.”
It was not. It never is.
See a video collage from the event.
Newly minted M1 Sam Fitzpatrick, one of 145 incoming medical students, summed up the experience in a single word:
“Reaffirming,” he said later, still proudly wearing his white coat.
“It’s a sense of relief that I got here,” he said, after the ceremony, on the heels of taking about 10 pictures with loved ones (seven came to share the moment with him).
“And it is a reaffirmation that I can believe in myself.”
Frank Hawkins, MD, president of the College of Medicine Alumni Council of the UNMC Alumni Association, urged the incoming med students to “love yourself as you do your friends and family, as you will your patients.”
Brock Calamari, M4, president of the class of 2026, told his new colleagues that med school would be “transformative, in the best possible way.”
Binh Le, M4, president of the UNMC Gold Humanism Honor Society chapter, urged the new students to “wear your coat with pride, humility and compassion.”
Alan Erickson, MD, assistant dean of student affairs, admitted to being nervous, before the event. Why?
“I just want it to be really special for them,” he said.
And it was. Thanks in part to the faculty, who placed those coats on their shoulders with pomp, circumstance and joy. “We are more excited than they are,” Dr. Erickson said.
And thanks to the loved ones, who filled the Orpheum Theater with the buzz of opening night. Moms who insisted on picture after picture. Just one more. Then another. Now get Grandpa in there. Now one in front of the UNMC icon. Another photo. Another hug. A day to remember and celebrate.
And thanks to the College of Medicine support staff, that sweated every detail. “Their work is incredible,” Dr. Grant said. “Cody (Phillips). Lindsay (Meyer). Crystal (Bearfield). Rachel (Samson). They make it so all we have to do is show up.”
But most of all it was special because of the gravity of it, even amongst the joy. The White Coat Ceremony is a tradition and program of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to humanism in health care. The UNMC College of Medicine Alumni Council, those who know best the responsibility to come, sponsored the coats.
“Medical knowledge alone does not make a physician,” Dr. Britigan said.
“There will be times you will not have anything medical to offer your patient,” he said. Days when patients look to you for empathy and compassion.
“This is part of what it means,” Dr. Britigan said, “to wear the white coat.”
