of white coats and stethoscopes…

Some medical schools have moved away from the white coat ceremony tradition to embrace a new tradition of presenting students with stethoscopes to symbolize the beginning of their journey to becoming physicians. The white coat separates doctors from patients by creating professional distance, whereas stethoscopes are tools that connect doctors and patients. A white coat is not necessarily essential to being a physician while a stethoscope is. Along the same lines, white coats are so prevalent in the health care industry that it diminishes the significance of the ceremony. Current ad campaigns depict pharmacists as “the other white coat.” What’s next? Physicians are so much more than a white coat. We are healers. We are patient advocates. We are lifetime students of medicine. So I think a stethoscope ceremony is a great idea—give us something that we can use to help us listen to patients’ bodies and not a rather useless coat that doesn’t really set us apart from any number of health care professionals.