Once again there was hustle and bustle as an eager crowd waited to be let into Omaha’s venerable Orpheum Theater. Backstage, key players readied, checking marks. Excitement in the air.
Opening night?
In a way, yes. Another White Coat Ceremony for the UNMC College of Medicine. The first step in the medical careers of 153 new students matriculating this fall.
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.
These coats are “blank as a sheet of paper, waiting for you to write your story,” said Sarah Chandler, M4, president of UNMC’s chapter of the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She was one of a handful of speakers to address the incoming class.
These coats, “should not be donned casually,” Dean Bradley Britigan, MD, told the students about to wear them for the first time.
The coats represent the trusted relationships physicians hold with their patients, Dr. Britigan said. The human aspect of medicine.
Dr. Britigan noted that he is likely participating in his final White Coat Ceremony as dean. Dr. Britigan announced in July that he intends to step down from the role and expects his successor to be in place by the time next year’s class arrives.
As is his tradition, Dr. Britigan gave the audience and incoming class a short lesson on the history of the UNMC College of Medicine and its forebears. In doing so, Dr. Britigan said, he’d picked up the mantle formerly carried by Robert Wigton, MD.
The incoming class includes 10 who serve as the inaugural cohort at the UNMC College of Medicine’s regional campus at Kearney. They had spent two weeks together preparing to enter medical school and already had become a tight group, Kaleb Burr said.
“With only 10 of us in Kearney we’ve got to rely on each other,” he said. “It’s going to be hard, but we’ve done hard things,” to get into medical school.
The hard things, and the triumph over them, will continue, speakers told the incoming class.
Frank Hawkins, MD, president of the UNMC College of Medicine Alumni Council, class of 1988, said he was so nervous on his first day of medical school, he found he’d packed two left shoes for his lunchtime run.
Ryan Chapman, M4, class of 2027 alumni relations chair, turned to address the incoming students directly. He said they would cherish moments with people. Holding pediatric patients. Hearing the first breaths of a patient coming off a ventilator.
“You are an amalgamation,” Chandler told them, one that will become “the best possible versions of yourselves.” Thanks to those who have prepared them for this moment, he said, and the teammates, mentors and patients they will yet meet.
It all starts on this day, by donning these white coats.
“Congratulations,” Chandler said, “and welcome to the team.”
Incoming medical students recite the Student Oath at the 2026 UNMC College of Medicine White Coat Ceremony.