The white coat ceremony (WCC) is a relatively new ritual in some medical (both M.D. and D.O.), optometry, dental, chiropractic, occupational therapy, physical therapy, podiatric, pharmacy, physician assistant, and veterinary medical schools that marks the student's transition from the study of preclinical to clinical health sciences. At some schools, where students begin meeting patients early in their education, the white coat ceremony is held before the first year begins.
WCCs typically involve a formal "robing" or "cloaking" of students in white coats, the garb physicians have traditionally worn for over 100 years and other health professions have adopted.
Read more about White Coat Ceremony: Description, History, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words white, coat and/or ceremony:
“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
—Bible: Hebrew Isaiah, 1:18.
“So by all means let’s have a television show quick and long, even if the commercial has to be delivered by a man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, selling ergot pills. After all the public is entitled to what it wants, isn’t it? The Romans knew that and even they lasted four hundred years after they started to putrefy.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)